Objects Out of Place
by Erik's Eternal Bride
Summary: Following a lead on a story that promises to make them famous, proves to be more than difficult for the Gunmen. For starters, Jimmy can't read maps and then they get sidetracked helping a hitchhiker who claims she was carjacked. LanglyOC
1. The Cherry Tree Motel

Title: The Cherry Tree Motel  
Author: Dru  
E-mail: Website: http/bloodstains. Rating: PG-13  
Archive: Anywhere, just e-mail me first to let me know...  
Summary: Following a lead on a story that promises to make them famous, proves to be more than difficult for the Gunmen. For starters, Jimmy can't read maps and then they get sidetracked helping a hitchhiker who claims she was carjacked. Langly/OC

Disclaimers: However much I may wish, I do not own our favorite conspiracy theorists, nor do I own the state of Washington, not that I would really want to. Still, the only things in this story that I do own are Rebecca Morris and the plot.

* * *

"Umm," chewing on his lip in deep thought, Jimmy sat in the back of the old and very abused van belonging to the Lone Gunmen. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, a large and detailed map fully unfolded sat in his lap. Mouthing words to himself as he allowed his finger to trail slowly over the map, following the contour of the roads.

"Well?" an impatient voice asked from the front of the van. Melvin Frohike turned his head to look back at the blonde seated in the back of the van. "Which way do we turn?" They had given Jimmy the task of reading the map and giving directions, because he was grumbling about how he wanted to help them pack up the van for their trip, in order to keep him from messing everything up they sent him out to get a map and promised him that he could navigate the cross-country trip.

"Hold on I'm thinking," he looked up at Frohike for a brief moment before returning his attention to the map that was taking up half of the free space in the cramped van. "Ah ha!" he exclaimed loudly after another few moments spent with him pouring over the map while the van sat motionless at the fork in the barren road. "Left, we turn left," his voice was full of pride like a child showing off a major accomplishment.

"Right," came the voice of John Fitzgerald Byers from the driver's seat. He pressed down on the gas pedal and turned the steering wheel to go left.

"NO!" Jimmy screamed, leaping to the space right behind the front seat. "Left, go left not right," he shoved the map in front of Byers. "Left, see?" his voice took on an urgent tone as he pointed to the spot on the map.

"JIMMY!" Byers yelled, trying not to swerve off the road while trying at the same time to bat away the oversized map. His voice was laden with panic, fearing that he would crash the van and kill them all.

"Idiot," Frohike immediately came to the aid of Byers, ripping the map from Jimmy's hands and shoving the blonde back into the rear of the van. Meanwhile both Frohike, and Byers were unaware of the danger that was quite literally right in front of them.

"AHH!" Langly screamed, being the only one in the van to see that they were heading straight for an old white Oldsmobile parked immobile by the side of the highway.

Byers's attention was diverted to his screaming friend and thus he did not notice the imminent danger. In a split second, and before anyone other than Langly in the van had any time to react, they had crashed into the car, with the accompanying screech of metal sliding upon metal. The impact sent Jimmy flying towards the front seat and nearly forced him over the seat and sprawling right into Frohike's lap. The airbags, old and suffering from lack of use, only inflated after they had hit the car, which served to increase the confusion and panic. Of course, Langly's persistent screaming wasn't helping much either.

"Umm guys, I think we just hit something," Jimmy commented, earning him glares from all three Gunmen.

"Ya think, moron?" Langly pushed his way around the airbags to get out of the van and survey the damage. "I think we're okay, we beat up that other car pretty bad though."

"You don't know a thing about cars," Frohike managed to push his was out of the car and came up behind Langly. "You can't even manage to siphon gas without nearly killing yourself."

"I have a delicate stomach." he protested, moving out of the way to allow Frohike to see the damage done to the two vehicles.

"We're fine. The Oldsmobile, though, is banged up pretty badly." the shorter man announced, walking back over to the side of the van.

"That's exactly what I said." Langly proclaimed indignantly. Seeing Frohike climb back into the van, he reluctantly followed; coming up to the side door and grumbling the whole way.

"Let's go then," Frohike ordered, sliding into place in the middle of the front seat.

"Yeah, we should get moving before someone comes along and finds us," suggested Langly as he turned back to see Jimmy. "And there's no way we're letting you read the map either,"

"What? Come on guys, please?" he held on possessively to the map, like a child refusing to share.

"No way. You almost got us killed. Give me the map," Langly reached into the rear of the van, grasping a corner of the map with his long fingers. Stubbornly resisting, Jimmy kept a hole of the map. He tried to pull it back and out of Langly's grasp. With a soft ripping noise, the section of the map that Langly was holding tore away and took a sizable amount of the map with it.

After studying the map for a moment, "Jimmy!" he exclaimed, accusingly. "This is a map of Wyoming!"

"Yeah," he said, as if it was obvious and Langly should have known all along. "We're in Wyoming,"

"No, you moron. We're in Washington!" by this point he now was nearly ready to throttle the blonde.

"I thought we lived in Washington," Jimmy was becoming very confused now.

"No, we live in Tacoma Park, which is NEAR Washington D.C., which is not Washington state. It's on the opposite side of the continent from where we are," he ripped the remaining part of the map from Jimmy's hands and threw it out the window. It floated lazily to the ground, coming in contact with it only after it had blown into the surrounding forest and out of sight.

"Hey!" he exclaimed, offended. "What did you do that for?"

"That map was useless! We're not in Wyoming, we're not near Wyoming. A map of Wyoming isn't going to do us any good!" Langly was nearly hysterical now, Jimmy having nearly pushed him to the boiling point.

"So the blockhead over there has been giving us directions from a map of Wyoming?" Frohike asked in an incredulous tone, the question directed at Langly. "That means we're completely lost," he sighed, exasperated. "We'll never make it to Seattle in time to meet our informant,"

"Calm down, Langly, Frohike," the ever level-headed one, Byers, spoke in a calming tone; trying to soothe the two boys. "We'll just drive to the nearest town and ask for directions there," he suggested. "After, of course, we report the crash,"

"Byers, we don't have to do that," Langly complained. "No one will know it was us,"

"Yeah," Frohike spoke up. "Besides, we can't afford the repair costs that we would have to pay,"

"It doesn't matter, it's the right thing to do," Byers replied, his tone showed that there was no way that he would be persuaded on this.

After getting the two other Gunmen to reluctantly agree, they backed up onto the road and drove off to find the nearest town where they could use a phone and get a new map, of Washington this time. Still, they didn't leave before Langly could get the last word in.

"Why'd we ever let him give us directions anyway?"

* * *

Tiredly Rebecca Morris forced herself to move forward on the side of the bleak highway. No cars had passed her in the last twenty minutes, and she was pretty sure that it would be a while before any more came. She wanted more than anything to simply sit down and rest for just a moment. She forced herself onward though, she knew that if she stopped to rest a moment would become minutes and hours and would waste too much time. She did not want to be out here after dark, although the setting sun made that possibility more and more likely. Even so, the next town couldn't be that far away, although she had been telling herself that for miles she wouldn't give up. Soon she would come upon some small town where she could rest and get some food.

Food, her stomach grumbled at the very thought. The last thing that she'd had anything to eat had been breakfast, and now the sun was starting to make it's descent behind the tree tops; reminding her just how long it had been since she had eaten. At this point she was even considering hitchhiking. Being a consseiur of psychological horror novels she knew just how dangerous it was to hitchhike, and she had turned down what appeared to be a nice elderly couple who had offered to drive her to the next town a couple of hours ago.

Sometimes she wished that she had just left all those Mary Higgins Clark and Lisa Scottoline books alone and gone to read some nice safe J.R.R. Tolkien, even though she had to admit she found those Lord of the Rings books incredibly boring. Still, how scared could you get of stumbling across some orcs in southern Washington? Now crazy serial murderers, that seemed so much more likely.

Having to walk miles upon miles; she had figured that even if she had a way to keep track of them she would have lost count by now, was making her seriously consider just hitching a ride with the next car that stopped. She doubted that even a hockey mask and chainsaw would keep her from getting into a car, although she may have been exaggerating that just a bit; she still was paranoid, exhausted but still slightly paranoid.

Then her ears picked up the faint sound of a car engine, then a blue van came into view and Rebecca silently prayed that it would stop. Even as she prayed for that, a heated argument was going on inside that very same van.

"We have to pick her up, Frohike," the calm voice of Byers interrupted the protest of his friend.

"We can't pick up a hitchhiker," he continued once Byers had stopped speaking. "Who knows she could be psycho and ready to kill us,"

"Don't you think you're being overly paranoid?" Byers asked, pulling over to the side of the road where she had stopped walking. "She probably owned the Oldsmobile we destroyed, it's the least we could do. Plus we're supposed to help people, remember?"

"If she turns out to be some mass murderer like in that movie Kalifornia, I get to say 'I told you so'," Langly warned, unhappy with the turn of events. Even as he said those words, Byers was ignoring the both of them and had already rolled down the window to talk to the girl.

"Car trouble?" he asked, leaning out the window a bit as he adressed.

"You could say that," she replied with a half laugh, like it was her own private joke that no one else would get.

"Would you like a ride to the next town?" Byers asked calmly, ignoring Langly and Frohike's sulking.

"Sure, thanks," she smiled, relief showing in her voice.

"There's a door on the other side, there's not much room but the next town can't be that far away," Byers smiled back politely, knowing that she would probably be furious once she found out that they had totaled her car.

"Okay," she walked over to the side of the van and quickly, so she didn't have time to change her mind and decide that this was probably near-suicidal, climbed inside and sat down on the floor next to a blonde guy. Almost as soon as she entered the van she began to have regrets. First of all she had just willingly climbed into an old and decrepit van driven by a guy who seemed way too polite, and had three other male passengers one looked like that some guy from Wayne's World, another looked like the poster boy for dirty old men, and the other one looked like a smiling baboon. And if that wasn't enough to make her feel like she was walking into a death trap, the inside of the van was filled with all sorts of things that did who knows what.

"So what's your name?" the one wearing the suit asked her.

"Rebecca Morris," and as soon as those two words left her mouth she wished she had given them a pseudonym. Of course, it probably wouldn't matter if they knew her real name or not they'd probably kill her anyway. She began to feel more comfortable remembering all of her self-defense classes and the fact that none of them seemed particularly strong. A few kicks to the groin would take care of them she figured, that was if they tried anything funny.

"I'm Byers. This is Frohike," he pointed to the one the dirty old man. "that's Langly," and he gestured to the guy with very long hair "and that's Jimmy," he pointed to the blonde sitting right next to her.

"Nice to meet you," Jimmy said, holding out his hand for her to shake and grinning. She couldn't help but wonder if his face was stuck like that or if he was just really polite.

"It's nice to meet you too, Jimmy," she replied, smiling and taking his hand. He struck her as a big dumb oaf, probably strong but harmless.

"So what happened to you, Rebecca?" Byers asked, pulling back into the road and driving once more. "We saw an old white Oldsmobile by the side of the road a while back, is it yours?"

"No, it belongs to the bastard who carjacked me," she replied, angrily. "He was standing by the side of the road with his ugly old car so I decided to stop to help him. Do the whole good Samaritan thing. So, I get out of the car and go over to help the poor guy. When he shoves me to the ground, and jumps into my car and drives it away,"

"That's awful," said Jimmy, looking very sympathetic. Then that smile returned "But hey if it will make you feel better, we crashed into that car,"

"Really?" she asked, incredulous. "Too bad he probably will never come back to it, still it's a good thing," she smirked, putting her hands behind her neck and leaning against the side of the van. "Too bad he took off with all my stuff still in my car,"

"What were you doing out here anyway?" Langly asked, jumping into the conversation, figuring that it would be more fun than just looking out the window.

"I just got fired from my job. And since I've decided to take some time off before I go searching for a new one, I'm doing this thing I saw in a movie once. Take two thousand dollars and my car and see how far I can get before running out of money," she crossed her legs and dropped her hands back into her lap.

"That sounds awesome," Jimmy smiled and got kinda of a daydreamy look. "I'd love to do that, nothing but me my car and the open road,"

"You make it sound like such a romantic idea. Truthfully, that's what I thought at the time too," she gave another kind of half laugh and smiled. "It's been such a weird time, but it has been fun. Just not in the way I'd imagined it. Of course, up until the point that my car got stolen,"

"When we get to the next town we should go to the police station with you. I got the license plate of the car that your carjacker was standing by. Maybe they could use it to track him down, or the person who he stole that car from if it's not his," Byers offered from the front seat.

"That'd be fine," she sighed. "I really hope they find this guy,"

"They, you don't need the police. I can track 'im down quicker than anyone," Langly offered, turning around to face the back. "I am an expert computer hacker after all,"

"So we're boasting now? Well then, I guess it's my turn. I'm a writer for the L.A. Times," she smirked, pulling her unruly black hair into a pony tail.

"Liar," he accused, leaning over the seat a bit.

"Okay, maybe just a bit. I was a writer for the L.A. Times. I just got fired, remember? From my little story," she sighed, weary from walking hours and hours and from the lack of sleep that came from lying awake in uncomfortable hotel beds.

"I don't believe it," he stated, his voice still accusing.

"Oh, really? Which part the getting fired, or the me working for the L.A. Times?" she asked, unbuttoning and taking off what looked very much like a plaid shirt that a lumberjack would wear to reveal a white tank top.

"You never worked for the L.A. Times," his voice was once more in an accusing tone.

"You wanna bet?" she asked, challenging him.

"Bet what? Some carjacker ran off with all your stuff," he earned an eye roll from Rebecca.

"I thought you were going to track him down," she smirked, toying with him was becoming increasingly more fun.

"I am, and then we'll find something to bet," he said, not even noticing that she was messing with him.

"Whatever you decide to bet I'll win. I did work for the L.A. Times," she folded up her shirt and put it in her lap.

"The next town is twenty miles away," Byers announced, looking at a passing green sign that stated that fact.

"At last," Rebecca said, relieved that soon she would be rejoining civilization, or whatever came pretty close to it.

After what, to Rebecca, seemed like an eternity of waiting, the van pulled in to the parking lot of a diner with it's name on the top of the building in neon lights, 'The Cherry Tree Diner'. She almost laughed out loud at the absurdity of the name, and idly wondered if they grew cherries in Washington. That would be rather ironic.

"We probably should get something to eat before we find the police station. Plus someone at the diner will know where exactly it is, so we don't have to waste time looking for it. And I bet you're rather hungry" Byers offered, once again demonstrating his level headedness and common sense.

"Sure, as long as you guys are buying, I don't have any money remember?" she smiled, opening the side door and practically leaping out of the van and onto the cracked asphalt that covered the small parking lot, glad to be out of the confines of the old van.

"Of course we're buying," Jimmy announced, pulling his wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans. "It would be carol to force you to watch us eat,"

"What? Carol?" she asked, not fully understanding what he said.

"You know carol, like carol and unusual punishment," he said, climbing out of the van after her.

"Do you mean cruel?" she guessed, wondering if she had underestimated his stupidity.

"Yeah that, cruel. I was close," he tried to make up an excuse.

"Close, yeah right. About as close as Wyoming is to Washington," came the amused voice of Langly.

* * *

It's amazing how much things can look up after only a meal. Rebecca was feeling much better about her situation now, having a plan on how to deal with her carjacking that didn't consist of walking around until finding a town and somehow calling for help. Her new one, she figured, was much better. At least she had the license plate number of the car he'd been driving. It didn't surprise her that that piece of shit car had broken down, just look at the thing! It was practically falling apart, he had to have been really desperate to steal that, or maybe that was his car and he was just waiting for some kind person to stop so he could attack them.

She sighed, resting her elbow on the table and placing her head in her open hand. At that moment in time it was a struggle to stay awake, she had nearly fallen asleep in the van on the way here several times. Although she was extremely tired, she didn't exactly want to reveal that to anyone, wanting to get to the police as soon as possible and not wanting the unneeded comments on how tired she looked.

"Ready to go?" Byers asked, jerking her out of her reverie and back to reality.

"Of course," she replied, sliding out of the booth and waiting for everyone else to come out as well.

"I'm just going to ask for directions to the police station," he stated, walking over to the counter to speak with a waitress.

"And I'm going into the van to see if I can find that car first, before we even get to the station" Langly said as he walked out the front door and out into the dark parking lot.

"I'm assuming that it's a race," she said to no one in particular, since Jimmy had gone into the van with Langly and Frohike was hitting on the waitress that Byers was asking directions from. Rebecca figured that she might as well go watch Langly hack into-well she didn't know exactly what he would hack into, maybe the DMV database. She was pretty good with computers and other technologies, but she was in no way technosavy.

Stepping out of the diner and into the parking lot, and involuntary shiver went down her spine. The sun had long since gone down and the temperature had dropped significantly. Untying what Langly had dubbed her ugly lumberjack shirt, she pulled it on and methodically buttoned all the buttons, save the top and bottom ones. As she pulled her hair out from under the shirt, she heard someone slam a car door.

Ignoring the sound, she made her way out into the middle of the parking lot and started to head out to the corner where they had parked the van. The parking lot only had one streetlight to provide light giving the parts of the lot that weren't illuminated rather dark. Still, she could see a sliver of light from the crack in the van's side door so she had a target and wasn't just fumbling around in the dark.

Walking towords the van, she saw a very familiar car. It was the same make and model as her own, but hers was a rather common car so she figured it could just be a coincidence. That is until she noticed that it had the same liscence plates as hers, and she realized that this was her car. She gaped at it for a moment and then saw a man standing beside the car, not just any man but the one that had shoved her to the ground and stolen her car.

"You bastard, give me my car back," she came up right beside him, fuming with anger.

"Like hell, bitch. This car is my ticket to Hollywood," he was so calm and collected, confident to the point of being cocky. The fact that he was so sure that she couldn't take her car back from her only served to make her angrier.

"No, it's my car and I will scream and have everyone in that diner come running out here and calling the police. Unless you give me the car back," she figured dealing with the police would cause more trouble than she really wanted and would only delay her even more.

"No way am I letting you keep me from becoming a movie star," he lunged out and grabbed her wrist pulling her towords him and covering her mouth with his hand. "Like ta see ya scream now," he laughed, as if it was somehow hilariously funny. And then he nearly yelled out in pain as she bit down on his hand, hard, with her teeth. Rebecca tried to get out of his grasp, pulling her arm away from him, but was unsucessful.

She stomped on his foot, which got him to release her wrist and she whirled around and began to run away. "You're not getting away that easy," he snarled, leaping forward and tackling her to the ground. "You know you're pretty cute for an old hag," he commented. He was straddling her, using one hand to cover her mouth and the other to pin down her wrists above her head.

In one fluid movement she brought up her knee and slammed it between her attacker's legs. He yelled out in pain and rolled off of her, whimpering and curling up into the fetal position. "Take that bastard, and 28 is not old," she mumbled the last part, almost as if to reassure herself of that.

Hearing the man's scream Jimmy rushed out of the nearby van and into the parking lot. He stopped dead in his tracks, seeing the man curled up into a small ball and whining. "What happened here?" he asked, grimacing as he thought of why the man would be holding his crotch and whimpering in pain.

"That," she pointed at the man lying on the ground, disgust evident in her voice. "Was the man who stole my car. He attacked me,"

"Remind me to never make you angry"

* * *

After getting things sorted out with the police, Rebecca figured that she should be dead tired. The truth was that she really wasn't at all. Fighting with the guy that had stolen her beloved car, he had turned out to be some guy from Kansas joyriding across the country, had sent a surge of adrenaline rushing through her system and kept her from getting any sleep. She didn't even feel like lying down at all. It was hard to believe that she had been so tired just a few hours earlier.

Because she really didn't feel like lying in her hotel bed, after the whole police ordeal she and the Gunmen had checked into the Cherry Tree Motel which was conveniently located right next to the Cherry Tree Diner go figure, she had decided to sit outside on the little concrete slab that separated the line of motel rooms from the parking lot. The night was getting even older and cold concrete was seeping in through her jeans making her butt numb, not that she really minded all that much.

This far away from a city you could see many stars, like pinpricks of light adorning the night sky. She was so absorbed in trying to find a familiar constellation that she didn't even notice when someone came out of the adjoining room and sat down next to her.

"What'cha doin?" the familiar voice of Richard Langly brought her mind out of the clouds, well to be correct stars, and back down to planet earth.

"Looking at the stars," she turned to smile at him, her elbows resting on her knees which were drawn up to her chest. "You can see them so clearly all the way out here,"

"Yeah, you can. It's not like back in D.C.," he looked up at the stars, noticing how many there were.

"D.C.?" she asked, mildly surprised. "So that's where you guys are from,"

"Tacoma Park actually, but it's close enough," he continued to gaze at the stars, seeing a few constellations he remembered from his 9th grade science class, like Cassiopia and Ursa Major.

There was a moment of silence, not the uncomfortable kind but the kind that happens when two people are both absorbed in the same thing and neither of them feels like talking. Of course, that usually changes.

"I like your hands," she said, as if it were the most casual thing in the world like commenting on the weather.

"Wha?" Langly wasn't exactly sure that he had heard her right.

"You have long fingers, like a pianist," she commented, holding out her hand. "See my fingers are so short,"

Langly brought his hand up to compare to hers. Sure enough his fingers were about an inch longer than hers. She smiled, knowing all along that she had been right. It really was such a trivial thing, but it still made her smile.

"Ow," Rebecca recoiled when their fingers collided, causing a spark, more out of surprise than actual pain.

"You're electric," he smiled, pulling his own hand back as well.

"Better watch out then," she smirked deviously, standing up and turning back to go into her motel room. "Well, I better get going,"

"'Night,"

"Goodnight,"

The sunlight poured in through the window adjacent to the bed, regardless of the fact that she had drawn the curtains the night before. They were flimsy and didn't block much light at all. Yawning, but feeling refreshed after the short night's sleep that she had managed to get, Rebecca sat up in bed and glanced at the alarm clock on the bedside table. The red numbers flashed- 12:45! Nearly one o'clock, she jumped up shocked that she had slept in so late. She must have been more tired than she thought.

Sliding off of the bed, her bare feet hit the soft carpet without a sound and didn't make that much more noise as the walked over to the window. Pushing aside the drapes she noticed, slightly sadly, that the van belonging to Byers, Frohike, Jimmy, and Langly was missing. Of course it would be missing, they had left hours ago. It was nearly one o' clock in the afternoon for heaven's sake. They could have slept in ridiculously late and still be miles away.

Still scolding herself for sleeping in so late, she began to pack up her things to prepare to return to L.A. in the morning. She figured nothing could top this adventure, she still wished she could have said goodbye to the guys though.

* * *

The end, but this is just part one in the series, which is unnamed as of yet.

Will write for reviews!


	2. The Help Wanted Ad

Title: The Help Wanted Ad  
Author: Dru  
E-mail: Website: http/bloodstains. Rating: PG-13  
Summary: With Rebecca in L.A. and Langly back in D.C. they both think that they've seen the last of each other. That is until the Gunmen place a help wanted ad and get a surprising applicant. Langly/OC

Disclaimers: However much I may wish, I do not own our favorite conspiracy theorists, nor do I own the city of L.A., not that I would really want to. Still, the only things in this story that I do own are Rebecca Morris and the plot. Part Two in the 'Objects out of place' series.

* * *

The shop was well lit, which was good because there was nothing Rebecca Morris hated more than darkness. Maybe there were a few other things that she hated more, but darkness was pretty high up there on the list. She paused outside the shop, glancing inside through the large display windows where books with titles such as "What the government doesn't want you to know" and "The Confessions of a Real Alien Abductee" where placed in prominent positions.

For a moment she considered just turning around and leaving, going back to her apartment that she couldn't afford to live in anymore and forget all of this craziness. That, however, was only a fleeting thought as her curiosity overwhelmed her and she pushed open the doors and walked inside.

The sound of the busy street traffic was muted inside the shop, giving it a surreal feel. Almost immediately she noticed the absence of anyone else in the shop besides herself. She wondered who was running the shop and where they were. Idly she began to browse, looking for one particular item.

How hard could it be to find one little newsletter, she wondered as she wandered around completely lost. Still there was no one in the store and she retreated further into it's depths, walking past row after row of bookshelves filled with books everything from the Grassy Knoll to Project Bluebook.

"May I help you?" the voice from behind made her jump. "I'm sorry, I did not mean to scare you," it said in an apologetic tone.

"It's okay," Rebecca turned around to see what could have only been the shopkeeper. "I wasn't paying attention,"

"That happens to me much of the time. It's so easy to get lost in here," he smiled. "So, can I help you find something? You seemed lost,"

"I was wondering if you have any copies of something called The Lone Gunman," she explained, remembering how Jimmy had told her about their newsletter.

"The Lone Gunman? Of course, I have it. I keep all of the copies in the back room. I'll go retrieve one for you," he retreated into the back of the store, disappearing down one of the shelves and leaving her standing there in the unfamiliar territory of the dusty shop.

A few moments later, with Rebecca still standing there rather awkwardly and waiting for him to get back, he returned with a copy of the paper tucked under his arm. He was cleaning a layer of dust off of his glasses with his hands while trying to hold the newspaper at the same time.

"Here you go," he finished cleaning his glasses and handed the slightly dusty paper to her. "Sorry about the dust, I haven't cleaned the back room in a while," he said apologetically.

"It's fine, I'm not bothered by dust. There's enough in my apartment to make an army of dust bunnies," she kind of half giggled at her own statement, taking the newspaper from his outstretched hand. "So how much?"

"Two dollars, come to the register this way," he lead her back into the front of the shop, to a counter that was covered in advertisements for seminars and lectures and probably a couple of UFO hunting parties. While he rang up the purchase she idly glanced at a few of them. 'The Truth Revealed: a lecture by Max McAllister alien abductee', 'John Sinclair autographing his new book, What the Government would kill you if you knew' and 'Wanted: UFO hunting crew' were just some of the colorful titles proclaimed on the multi-colored leaflets proudly displayed. "You know it's funny," the shopkeeper's voice caused her to look up. "You must have really done your research. Not many people have heard of The Lone Gunman,"

"No I would suppose not," she smiled, taking the receipt as is popped out of the printer.

"If you don't mind me asking, how exactly did you hear about it?"

"A little baboon told me,"

* * *

"Government Monitoring Unsuspecting Public," Rebecca read the headline to herself in her favorite semi-crowded coffee shop, Java Hut. A pleasant coffee and cinnamon aroma drifted through her nostrils, mixing with the strong smell of newspaper from her copy of The Lone Gunman. She ignored the two people who stared at her after reading the headline, even though she was beginning to feel rather foolish. The four guys hadn't seemed crazy, but looks could be deceiving she figured after reading a couple pages of the Lone Gunman.

Even though she thought the ideas were completely crazy, and that none of them could write a half decent newspaper article, she continued reading. It was rather intriguing how they took the most simple things that most people barely noticed and formulated the most absurd and strange theory to explain them.

If nothing else it was interesting to find out what their theories were, as strange and improbable as they were. After finishing the entire newspaper she carefully folded it up and placed it beside her on the table, taking a bite of her cream cheese Danish.

"My dearest Becky," a voice that sounded very much like nails on a chalkboard came from behind her. She didn't even have to turn around so see who it was. Only one person she knew had that horrible a voice.

"Don't call me that Jerry," she took another bite out of her Danish and sipped on her something-cino, she could never quite remember which one it was.

"Becky, I'm hurt. And here you hade me thinking we were the best of friends," his grating voice had a false sweetness to it, and he didn't even bother to hide his false sincerity.

"And I thought that I'd seen the last of you once I left my job," she pretended not to notice when he pulled up a chair and sat uncomfortably close to her, less than a foot away.

"But my dear Becky, you did not leave your job," he had placed his elbows on the table and accentuated 'leave' with a finger jab in the air. "You were fired,"

"And just who do you think caused that to happen," she tried to sound as venomous as possible, just wanting him to go away and leave her alone.

"I'm not the one who was having an affair with the boss," he smirked, anticipating her reaction.

"I was not having an affair with our boss," she said, her tone angry and raised a bit. She slunk down back into her seat when half of the coffee shop patrons eyed her strangely. "You made that up and threatened to go public with that if he didn't fire me that moment. And here I had thought he was a decent human being,"

"That, my dear, is the price to pay for being civil with someone in the workplace," he grabbed the remaining part of her danish and shoved it into his mouth.

"Oh really? I don't believe that civility is something that ought to be punished," she glared at him, chewing with his mouth open and pieces of danish falling all over the front of his shirt.

"Then you picked the wrong profession. Journalism is a nasty world kiddo," he wiped his pastry covered hands on his slacks.

"Why are you here? You must want something," she accused, disgusted at his lack of table manners.

"I can get you your old job back," he smirked, as a confused look passed across her face. "You only have to do one little thing for me,"

"I knew that was coming," she interrupted him as his mouth stood open, him ready to speak.

"You should know better than to interrupt dear," his smirk grew larger, if such a thing was even possible since he was practically grinning ear to ear. "As I was saying the one thing you have to do for me is," he paused for effect. "Sleep with me,"

"First of all what makes you think that I want my old job back. As you said, I didn't have what it takes to be a journalist-"

"Well, I didn't expressly say that," he interjected.

"Yes, but you did imply it. And secondly I will never sleep with you, ever and that is final," now it was her turn to smirk at the forlorn look on his face.

"Bitch," he stood up abruptly, making his chair clatter to the floor which destroyed the graceful exit he was hoping for. "I'll make it my personal mission to see to it that you never get hired for another job ever again. No matter where it is," he grabbed her cup of coffee. "And I'm taking your coffee,"

"Give that back," she stood up and tried to grab the coffee cup out of his hand.

"Okay," and he flicked the top off of the styrofoam cup and threw it's hot contents onto Rebecca, which served to make her very angry.

"You bastard," she looked down at her ruined white blouse and jeans, which were burning her rather painfully. He was smirking so loudly as she viewed her clothes in horror that she could only really do one thing.

Kick him as hard as she could in the balls.

* * *

Relaxing on her couch, Rebecca couldn't help but smile at the events that had occurred earlier today. Jerry had agreed not to press charges in exchange for her not pressing charges for throwing hot coffee on her. So, all in all it had been a good day. Not even the growing pile of bills that she couldn't afford to pay would damper her mood. Okay, so the did, but not by much. She was still floating on the high of watching Jerry's face contorted in pain as he dropped to the ground. She had wanted to do that to him for so long, practically since he had joined the L.A. Times staff.

She sighed, thinking of her old job. It was wonderful and she loved it, but at the same time she hated it. And the worst part was that she couldn't figure out how that was possible. She had loved the writing part of it, and the fact that she usually got some of the dullest articles didn't bother her much, the part that really got to her was the politics of it. It was awful how people were doing everything short of murder to claw their way to the top. Just because she wasn't willing to put aside her morals, not that she knew exactly what they were, to get a few steps ahead in life had excluded her for a lot of promotions. Also, because she was one of the only people in her office to be civil to her boss and have him be civil back caused many to speculate that they had been having an affair.

How willing people were to believe that never ceased to amaze her. Another thing was that one of the people that spread the rumor the most viscously was the woman who was having an affair with her boss. Office politics were just insufferable.

Sometimes she wondered if getting the hell out of Los Angeles would help her. For one thing, she knew that she wouldn't run into people like Jerry anymore. Another thing was that she could escape the heat, the heat was what made L.A. seem like hell. And for her, it was starting to appear more and more that way with each rejected resume and each bill piling up on her kitchen counter.

* * *

Things had elapsed into a sort of routine for Rebecca Morris. First she would wake up in the morning and read the paper, it wasn't the L.A. Times never the L.A. Times, while she ate breakfast. Of course, for her breakfast consisted of a piece of toast and some orange juice. Sometimes she would have leftover Chinese food, but that was only when it wasn't all moldy. She was currently trying to see how long she could last by drying up her savings account and only paying the essential bills, she had no telephone anymore, and praying that one of the jobs she had applied to would accept her.

After her breakfast she usually went for a jog, of course this didn't occur when most people took a jog. Most people jog at the insanely early hours shortly after noon. However, she jogged at around eleven or noon. Since she had no job she didn't need to get up in the insanely early hours, something that she really didn't miss. She really wasn't very keen on fitness but she figured she had to do something other than laze all over her apartment and look for jobs.

Then, she would start to look for a job, sifting through endless newspaper help wanted ads and websites. She would find a few good jobs that she could apply for, and she'd send in her resume and a sample of her writing and wait. A few days, to a week later she would usually get a reply. Always they'd be refusing her, and she had figured that Jerry had gotten to them. After nearly every refusal letter she would feel even worse.

The sad thing was that all of her friends had worked for the L.A. Times and had refused to speak with her. Her mini-vacation had only served to remove her from her reality and make it that much harder to come to terms with once she returned. She felt like her whole world had come crashing down on her, and in a sense it had. She had no job, and very little chance of getting one, and all of her friends had abandoned her.

Before leaving the shop where she had purchased her copy of the Lone Gunmen, Rebecca had asked the owner when the next issue was due in. He had told her that it should arrive in eleven days and promised to hold her a copy.

"Not that it would sell out anyway, It never does. Doesn't come close," he had commented, slightly sadly.

And eleven days had passed, and she had figured that she might as well go to the store and pick up a copy. Even thought she was being especially frugal now that she was running out of money, quickly, she figured that she might as well buy another issue, she needed to be amused right now.

After buying her issue and settling in her favorite spot in her favorite shop, sans her favorite cream cheese danish this time though, she began to read intently. Not much had changed in the form of the writing style, it was still not very good for a newspaper article, and the ideas were still improbable and crazy in every way. Still, as before she was fascinated by the ideas they had managed to come up with.

Then, towards the end, and taking up almost and entire page, was a help wanted ad for a full time writer. She looked at it curiously for a moment before realizing that this could be a great opportunity for her. They were obviously against corruption so Jerry couldn't intimidate them, in fact they'd probably write a story for it. Another thing was that she would have to move to D.C. and so she could escape from L.A. where she wouldn't run into Jerry or anyone from her work. It seemed like the perfect plan. And there was no doubt in her mind about if they would hire her, what other real journalist would apply?

* * *

Less than a week later she stood inside a LAX terminal, waiting for her plane to start boarding. She had just gotten off one of the pay phones lining the wall adjacent from her current seat. She had been talking to Langly, telling him that her plane should be getting in at around 9:00 and they had promised that they would be waiting for her at the airport. Rebecca smiled as the boarding call started for her non-stop flight to Washington D.C. and perhaps to an entirely different life.

THE END...but only to this part in the series.


	3. The Brown Cardboard Box

Title: The Brown Cardboard Box

Author: Dru

E-mail: http/bloodstains. Gen/Het

Rating: PG-13

Summary: Langly decides to help Rebecca move in to her new apartment. Langly/OC

Disclaimers: However much I may wish, I do not own our favorite conspiracy theorists, nor do I own the city of Washington D.C., not that I would really want to. Still, the only things in this story that I do own are Rebecca Morris and the plot. This is part three in the 'Objects out of Place' series.

A/N: Just in case anyone was wondering this takes place around the time of All About Yves, just pretend that never happened ok?

Entr'acte Sprite: You are quite intuitive aren't you? Yes, I am a Phan, how smart of you to deduce as much from my story. Here is your update, I apologize for it being so delayed, I was having major writer's block and could only write a few sentences at a time. Thank you for the review.

* * *

"We're all going to die," the distraught passenger declared while holding onto his seat as if it were his only life line.

"Get a grip, it's only some turbulence," Rebecca Morris muttered, as the plane jostled around slightly but not enough to cause real alarm, in most people anyway. "It happens all the time," she was becoming quite annoyed at the man sitting next to her. He had been proclaiming their imminent demise since the plane had taken off.

"And I suppose you've flied many times before as to know that," he said, the plane's movement calming down until they were flying normally again.

"No I've never flown before, but I do know that the chances are very low that turbulence alone can bring down a plane," she went back to reading the newest Mary Higgins Clark novel.

"You'd be surprised at what can bring a plane down, lady," as he returned to reading his newspaper, glancing out the window every so often.

She resolved herself to ignore him, she was becoming very sick of his warnings and smart remarks. Although she was a bit afraid of heights, she wasn't nearly so paranoid as to panic whenever their plane trembled just a slight bit. His constant fidgeting was getting on her nerves as well. He was so alert, it was as if he had expected the plane to fall from the sky at any moment. And that if it did he would be able to, through some action of his, be able to save himself.

"Take a nap if flying makes you so nervous," she suggested, casting a sideways glance towards his fidgeting hands.

"Oh, no I couldn't possibly sleep. Not in these conditions," he glanced around skittishly.

"Stop being so paranoid," she laughed a little to herself, thinking about just how paranoid the men who she was about to work for were.

"What's so funny? I really don't think that our dire predicament is all that funny." he grabbed a little balloon filled with sand, a stress ball, and began to squeeze it.

"Nothing is really all that funny. And I really do not believe that our situation is dire. We're not in any real danger," she continued to read her book. She was near the end and she was, as she always did with her Mary Higgins Clark books, trying to figure out who the killer was before it was revealed. Currently she had picked the person who could no way be the killer, usually that was who it was.

"We're not in any real danger? Are you nuts? We're thousands of feet into the air and flying in a tin can that could come crashing down on us any second," he still had a death grip on his stress ball.

"Lots of people fly every single day,"

"Yeah, well lots of people die every single day too," She sighed and prepared herself for what was going to be a long flight.

* * *

"Attention Passengers, we will be landing at Airport shortly. Please buckle your seatbelts and prepare for landing," the message was repeated in Spanish and then the 'Please Fasten Your Seat Belts' light came on in a muted orange color. She blinked a few times and rubbed her eyes, having just woken from a rather long nap.

"Thank goodness that's over," the pessimistic man sitting next to her proclaimed, giving a sigh of relief. He had no need to buckle his seatbelt because he had never taken it off.

"For once this flight you and I agree on something," unlike him she had taken off her seatbelt to be more comfortable during the flight and had to rescuer it. She hadn't finished her book before she had decided to go to sleep and it took a few minutes of digging around and under her seat to find it. By the time she had, half of it's pages were creased and bent and it's cover had little droplets of orange juice on it, probably from the children sitting in the seat behind her she surmised.

"Isn't it good to see things from my point of view?" he began to gather some of his stuff lying about too, as the plane made it's descent.

"Your point of view would drive me crazy. Is there ever a time you don't think you are going to die?" for what seemed like the hundredth time this flight she immersed herself back into what was becoming her favorite Clark novel to date.

"No, because there's always a time when I could," he reached into the aisle to grab his stress ball that had rolled by the seat behind him. "Um, excuse me sir," he tapped on the seat rest in front of him. "Could you possibly grab my stress ball?" he asked. "It's right there by your foot" he pointed to the small blue balloon resting near the man's dress shoe.

"Sure," he picked it up and threw it at the man's head, where it bounced off the bald spot on the top of his head and landed in the lap of the child sitting in the seat behind him.

"Here yaw go mister," the little boy handed him the ball, which now had a hole in it and was leaking sand all over the Rebecca's seat.

"Thank you," he said, sheepishly as he tried to brush the sand off of her stuff.

"Leave it, it's fine," she glanced over him out the window to see the ground becoming closer and closer. "Besides we'll be landing soon," _and then I'll get off of this crazy plane and back to sane people_ she added silently, although she highly doubted that the Lone Gunmen could be considered sane.

"Okay," he stared out the window watching as the ground rose up to meet them.

Soon the plane had landed on the runway and had pulled up to the terminal. All of the passengers hurried off of the plane, as though they had some important meeting that couldn't be missed. Rebecca only hurried because she couldn't stand to be on that plane any more. She knew that another hour or so listening to mutterings of "we're all going to die" would surely make her question her sanity.

* * *

"I still can't believe she worked for the L.A. Times," Langly muttered.

"You're just mad that you were wrong," Frohike grumbled, thoroughly tired of his friend's complaining.

"It's just she doesn't seem the type. To be working for something to evil," he stated, glancing at the screen mounted on the wall near the ticket booth. It said that the flight was on time, at least they wouldn't be waiting in this infernal airport for long.

"I would hardly call the L.A. Times evil," Byers commented, glancing at his watch for a second.

"Well, the government runs it," he sat down with a plop on one of the cushioned chairs lining the walls.

"Whatever, just shut up Langly," the oldest gunman replied, growing more and more annoyed with Langly by the moment.

"Hey look!" Jimmy proclaimed, pointing out the window.

"What is it? Another blinking light?" Frohike, as always, was quick to dismiss Jimmy.

"No, the plane landed," he said, slightly hurt.

"Finally," Langly jumped off of the seat and walked over closer to where the passengers would be exiting the plane.

"You're quite enthusiastic," Frohike noted, walking over to stand beside his friend. "Does that have anything to do with a certain lady who happens to be on that plane," he pointed to the gate where the passengers were already departing the plane.

"Shut up Dohike,"

"Ohh, so we're resorting to an insult you haven't used in years? Man you must really like her,"

* * *

Walking down the airport terminal, Rebecca felt much better after finally getting away from that annoying paranoid man she was forced to endure for hour upon hour. She looked forward to going to her apartment and taking a nice long nap. Of course, she knew that she would have to assemble her bed before she could sleep in it. That only put a slight damper on her plans though.

As she entered the airport she noticed the four of them standing on the side, near a row of seats lining a huge window. Langly seemed angry, his face was bright red. He was arguing with Frohike and neither them nor Jimmy and Byers noticed her. She walked right up behind where Frohike and Langly were arguing.

"'ello," she said, laughing when she saw them jump in surprise.

"What'd you do that for?" Langly asked, slightly embarrassed for reacting the way he did.

"Do what?" she replied, innocently.

"Scare us like that,"

"Us?" Frohike snickered. "I wasn't scared,"

"Shut up Dohike," he snarled.

"Two times in one day? Man you have it bad,"

* * *

"Thanks for dropping me off," Rebecca said, slinging her carry-on bag over her shoulder and hopping out of the van. They were parked in the side lot of her new apartment complex. 'Charleston Place' was the name of the nearly ancient building. It wasn't falling apart, it was just being overtaken by some type of ivy or other type of vine. It looked charming, much better than her old modern chrome and glass building. Just another symbol of her changing life.

"No problem," Langly said casually, his forearm on the back of the front seat. He had turned around to face her, sitting in the back with Jimmy. "Hey if you need any help unpacking-"

"You have to finish your article Langly," Byers reminded him.

"Byers, it can wait a day," Langly protested.

"And I could use the help," she added.

"Fine, but you have to finish it when you get back," he insisted.

"Sure, whatever," he jumped out of the van and pulled open the side door for Rebecca.

"Thanks," she smiled as she stepped out of the van.

* * *

After climbing six flights of stairs, for the elevator was not working and walking down no less than four separate corridors they had arrived at apartment number 632: Rebecca's new apartment. Langly was standing beside her, weary from climbing all of those stairs.

"You do have a phone, right?" he asked, as they stepped inside the dark apartment.

"Yeah, it should be hooked up," she ran her hand over the areas of wall near the door trying to find a light switch.

"Here it is," she heard Langly's voice coming from the kitchen, and a moment later light flooded the apartment.

"Why the hell is the light switch in the kitchen? And why does it turn every light in the apartment on?" she asked, setting her carry-on bag on the floor near one of the enormous piles of boxes scattered near the door.

"I don't know," he replied, coming out of the kitchen and wandering around the apartment. "This is a nice place, despite the screwed up wiring,"

"Thanks," she smiled, and walked over to the nearest box. "Let's start with this one,"

"Sure," Langly walked over to where she was standing.

Rebecca pulled and exacto-knife from her bag and plunged it into the tape covered crack where the two flaps of the box met. Slowly, she slid it across the box until it opened. "What the?" she asked as she looked inside.

"What?" Langly asked, peering over her shoulder and leaning a little closer to her than he really had to, his chest was nearly pressed up against her back.

"This is not my stuff," she pushed stuff around in the box, trying to see if anything that belonged to her was in there.

"You sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure," she pulled out a orange and black striped man's shirt. "I'm definitely sure,"

"Wow, that sucks," he backed away and looked at the other boxes. "Maybe that box just got mixed in with your stuff," he suggested.

However, that was not the case. After opening and going through every single last box, they had yet to find a single possession belonging to Rebecca Morris. Maybe this was a symbol of things to come, solemnly thought Rebecca, she desperately hoped not though.

"At least your phone is hooked up," Langly offered, trying to be helpful.

"That's not my phone," she countered, walking over to the foreign phone. She did wish it was hers though, it was much better than the piece of crap white thing she had. "Hey, do you know the number of any nearby pizza places, I'm starving,"

"Pizza Hut is 555-6748," he recited off of the top of his head.

"Pizza Hut it is,"

* * *

Around thirty minutes later, the Pizza delivery man had just about as much difficulty finding the elusive apartment as them when they first came in, Rebecca and Langly were sitting down on the hardwood floor of her apartment with one large pepperoni pizza and two Cokes.

"I love-" here he took a bite "pizza,"

"Me too, but I know I really shouldn't eat it so often. I need to venture out into the world of real food," she said, as she gulped down some coke.

"Why eat real food? This stuff tastes just like cardboard," he took another bite of his pizza, and washed it down with some coke.

"I think the more common word would be chicken," she replied, reaching for a napkin.

"True, if this actually tastes like chicken. Which it doesn't," he leaned back against the kitchen wall. "I can't wait to see what your apartment looks like with your stuff in it,"

"I will yell at that moving company. And demand my money back," she moved so she was sitting next to him. "I wonder how often they screw up like this,"

"I don't know. Maybe your just unlucky enough to be the first major screw up," he grabbed another slice of pizza.

"I'm cursed aren't I?" she asked, smiling.

"Maybe, it could be an X-file," replied Langly as he devoured another piece of the pizza.

"A what?" she asked, confused.

"It's not important," he reached for another piece.

"Are you going to eat the whole pizza?" he had eaten over half of it already, and not many pieces were remaining.

"Yes, you going to stop me?" he reached to take the last two slices.

"Yes, I am," she grabbed his wrists and forced them away from the pizza box. "You weakling,"

"Weakling?" he tried to fight her and grab the remaining two slices of pizza. He was only able to get about a foot away from the box.

"Yes, weakling," she forced his wrists up and he fell onto his back, sending Rebecca sprawling onto his stomach. She was on top of him, pinning his hands above his head, her jet black hair falling into his face. "No more pizza for you," she said, smirking and kissed him gently on the cheek.

He stammered for a moment, trying to say something that Rebecca couldn't quite figure out before he just fell silent, and she got off of him.

She was still smirking.

THE END


	4. The Flashback

Title: The Flashback  
Author: Dru  
E-mail: Rating: PG-13  
Summary: What do we know about May of 1989? The Gunmen meet at a technology convention...but what else? Langly/OC  
Disclaimers: However much I may wish, I do not own our favorite conspiracy theorists, nor do I own May of 1989, not that I would really want to. Still, the only things in this story that I do own are Rebecca Morris and the plot. This is part four in the 'Objects out of Place' series.

A/N: I know this doesn't really advance the plot..any..at all I just had to write this. I know it's really short but I was bored and I just saw Unusual Suspects for the first time.  
As a side note: Rebecca is 17 here, which is 4 years younger than Langly...

* * *

May 1989

Baltimore, Maryland

Dulaney High School

"Rebecca Morris," the teacher's voice caused her to look up from the game of cards she was playing on the bus seat.

"Here," she replied, and returned to the game of blackjack she was playing with four other people closest to her. "Hit me," she said to the dealer, a boy named Jack.

"Right," he gave her another card as the teacher called out the name of a 'Wilemena Murile,' "You know Becky," he commented as she was once again the only one to get a Blackjack. "I'm sure you'd clean out every casino in Vegas. If you ever went,"

"If," she smiled, and handed him her cards. "Shall we play again?"

"I don't think so. You've just taken all of my lunch money. That's what you've done," Addy Wilkins said, brushing a lock of her poofy brown hair out of her eyes. "And my mom was expecting change,"

"You'll just have to tell her that you gambled all of your money away," she smirked, leaning against the back of the seat she was sharing with her best friend, Addy.

"You're just cruel Becky," she pouted, feigning anger.

"Thank you," she stuffed the money into the pocket of her jeans. "Always nice doing business with you, Ad," she turned to everyone else. "And the same goes to all of you," they grumbled and sat back down in their seats as the bus lurched forward out of the school parking lot and into the road. She passed half of the money she had earned under the seat to Jack, part of their secret deal.

"You are all about to get a special treat. The Baltimore Consumer Electronics Convention is a wonderful and exciting convention and I'm sure that you all will enjoy it. I also expect you to fill out the forms which are being passed around now. I do not expect anything less from my AP science class, now would I?" the teacher continued her harangue, and as usual the bored students ignored her.

"I can't believe she made the field trip on Senior Skip day," Addy complained to Rebecca.

"I would have skipped anyway except for that stupid essay she set," she replied, tuning out the voice of their teacher.

"It was a really clever thing though to make anyone who was absent have to write a 3-page essay on the convention," she sighed. "It would have been really nice though to skip and hang out with everyone else,"

"Everyone else who wasn't stupid enough to take this AP class. We're seniors, in a few months we'll be in college. And we can't even take Senior Skip day off?" Rebecca sighed. "I'll just have to make it Freshman Skip day next year at Penn State,"

"My dear Rebecca, No one cares if you skip in college. My brother skips nearly every single day and no one cares," she smirked.

"You forget, your brother is nearly flunking out of college," she pointed out, nearly falling out of the seat as the bus sped around a corner.

"Clumsy, clumsy," Addy smirked as Rebecca mananged to grasp onto the back of the seat, only saving herself from falling completely on the floor. She was suspended, with half of her body hanging in the aisle, and being held up simply by her hand. After she mananged to get back on the seat she glared at Addy.

"Is it too much to ask for my best friend to help me when the bus is trying to throw me from my seat?" she asked, looking around at the half of the bus that was still starting at her.

"I should have, then I could charge you for my rescue services," she kidded.

"You're a mogul,"

* * *

"Now class, I expect you all back here at two o' clock sharp-" she noticed that most of her students walked away "-and remember to fill out those forms!" she shouted as the last of the students practicaly ran out of her field of vision. "No appreciation for their elders these days," she muttered stepping backwards and colliding with what she thought was a woman. "Oh I'm sorry miss-" she soon realized she had been mistaken.

"You got a problem with the hair?" the man she had ran into asked. The teacher had mistaken him for a woman due to his long blonde hair.

"Umm...no sir I'm sorry I didn't mean to," she tried to apologize.

"You're just some blind old bat," he snarled, and picked up his merchandise that had fallen all over the floor.

"Well I never. You're so disrespectful, young man. And you're stealing cable too!" she pointed to the electronics in his hands. "I should report you to the authorities,"

"Em..please don't," he backed away. "I'm sorry for calling you an old bat, I really am." he picked up his pace. "I have to go now," he scampered off, leaving behind a very sastified teacher.

He was Richard 'Ringo' Langly, and he was seriously worried that the teacher would actually get him in trouble. Making his way back to his booth he figured it would be best to make himself scarce for a while. Just in case.

"Here we go," he closed the curtians to his booth and stuck a sign there saying he'd be back in two hours. "I wonder where the guys are," and he wandered off to find them.

* * *

"This place is so dull," Addy complained, sitting at a table in the food court.

"I'd say," said Sara Matthews, a friend of Addy and Rebecca, as she came up to their table. "But did you see the guy in the FCC booth? He was so hot," Addy and Rebecca rolled their eyes, getting ready for a long ramble about this mystery hot guy. "He had these gorgeous blue eyes, and gorgeous hair, and this gorgeous little beard and-"

"We get it, everything about him is gorgeous," Rebecca interrupted her.

"It's true. If you don't believe me then just come with me to see him," Sara suggested, grabbing Addy's upper arm and pulling her up. "Well come along then," she gestured for Rebecca to come along too.

"Fine, but only because I'm really bored," she stood up and followed Sara back into the convention center.

When they finally reached the FCC booth, they found it empty. A compuer was sitting there, turned on and playing the start menu for some game along with the annoying music that went with it. Other than that, there was no one Rebecca and Addy gave each other knowing looks.

"He was here," Sara insisted. "I mean it,"

"Right, and I'm sure so was Elvis," Rebecca said, turning to walk away.

"That isn't possible, Ithought he wasin Vegas," Addy smirked, walking away with Rebecca.

"You guys suck," she muttered, walking off in the opposite direction from the two girls. She was glancing back over her shoulder, nothing that Rebecca and Addy were walking in the direction of the food court just in case she needed to find them again.

She was walking forward, but she was glancing back and, thus, unable to watch where she was going. As she walked, she didn't notice the man standing right in front of her. He was looking around, and couldn't see her. She turned her head just in time to see him, but not enough time to stop. They collided, both falling to the ground with the older man falling ontop of Sara.

"I'm sorry," he said, getting up. He was wearing a long black coat, dressed professionaly.

"It's okay," she grimaced, rubbing her sore back as she sat up. "I wasn't watching where I was going,"

"Do you need a doctor?" he asked, helping her to her feet.

"No, I'm fine-"

"Sara, what happened?" her teacher asked, running over to where they had collided.

"We just had a colision," the man explained.

"I'm not asking you, I bet you ran into her on purpouse. You little pedophile," she accused, pulling Sara to her feet.

"I'm sorry, we never were introduced. I'm Special Agent Fox Mulder, I'm with the F.B.I.," he flashed his badge.

"Whatever," the teacher replied, dragging Sara away.

* * *

"Alright, class. I'll collect your papers now," the teacher walked around, grabbing the crumpled pieces of white paper from the outstretched hands of the students. They had returned to the bus, and were currently driving out of the convention center parking lot and back to the school.

"Rebecca, name three products being sold at the center," Abby demanded, scribbling down the remaining answers.

"Here, just copy off of mine," she handed her the sheet.

"Thanks," she quickly jotted down the answer and handed both of their sheets to the teacher.

"That was so dull," Rebecca said, yawning as she leaned her head against the window of the moving bus.

"I ran into this really hot guy," Sara commented from the seat behind them.

"Let me guess he had gorgeous eyes, gorgeous hair, and gorgerous everything," Addy replied.

"Well yeah, but this time he was real," she insisted, leaning forward over the seat. "She-" she pointed to the teacher. "-called him a pedophile,"

"Sara, if five minutes goes by before you claim you met some hot guy it'll be sign of the apocalypse," Rebecca stated, pulling out a deck of cards. "On a happier note, who's up for a game of blackjack,"

Her comment was met with collective groans.

THE END


	5. The Mystery of the Missing Geek Part One

Title: The Mystery of the Missing Geek- Part One  
Author: Dru  
E-mail: Url: http/bloodstains. Category:Gen/Het  
Rating: PG-13  
Summary: Kimmy is nowhere to be found, however when Rebecca recieves and E-mail-things take a dangerous turn. Langly/OC

Disclaimers: However much I may wish, I do not own our favorite conspiracy theorists. Still, the only things in this story that I do own are Rebecca Morris and the plot. This is part five in the 'Objects out of Place' series.

A/N: I just got Bree Sharp's A Good And Evil Girl. sings David Duchovny/I know you could love me/I'm sweet and I'm cuddly/I'm gonna kill Scully...so yeah I'm hyper...really hyper, keep that in mind. This is going to be in two parts but I'll try to get part two out as soon as I can.

Entr'acte Sprite: Thanks for the review, hope you enjoy this chapter.

* * *

He watched the apartment through his binoculars, in the early morning sunlight he was barely to make out the lanky form hunched over the computer. It was past dawn, but he hasn't slept at all yet. He knows his accomplice should be coming in a couple of hours to carry out the plan, and he wants to be alert when they bring their victim to their hideout. A slip up could cost them everything at this stage.

Getting up from his hiding place in the apartment across the street from his victim, the man stretches out and places the binoculars on the dust covered coffee table next to his stack of magazines and empty pizza box. After picking up his handgun and tucking inside his jacket, he walked out the front door. It closed with a thud, dust coming off of it in a light brown cloud before settling to the ground.

* * *

Squinting her eyes in the early morning light, Rebecca Morris climbed out from underneath her many layers of covers. Winter was coming, and already a cold chill had come over Washington D.C. She shivered, mentally reprimanding herself for not buying warmer pajamas to replace the thin ones she had worn in L.A. After wrapping her thick comforter around her body for warmth, she hopped off of the bed and onto her cold hardwood floor.

She was sure that she had turned on the heat last night, it shouldn't have been as cold as it was. Padding over to her thermostat she discovered that, indeed, it should be much warmer than it was. She figured she'd yell at the manager about it, she was pretty sure that she was cursed. First the mix-up with her stuff, they did end up finding it and refunding her money but she was without her stuff for nearly a week, and now her apartment building was falling apart around her.

Maybe she was exaggerating that a bit, ascetically the building looked fine. However, when you actually moved in you discovered that the lights decided when they would like to work and the heat didn't work at all. It was only really a problem in the morning and at night, most of the time she wasn't even home; this was evident in the multitude of boxes still lying around, instead she was at The Lone Gunman offices. Of course, it wasn't really an office, it was more like an electronic store that had never heard of the concept of decent lighting.

Coffee, she decided that she needed some coffee. And not that instant crap that was sitting in her cupboard, first of all she didn't even have a coffee maker, which made having instant coffee around rather pointless, and secondly Starbucks made much better coffee than her. And that was exactly where she decided to go.

* * *

The jeep drove through the busy Washington D.C. streets, being careful not to drive faster than the speed limit. He didn't want to be stopped and have his car recorded as being in the D.C. area. He knew that he was being more cautious than the situation warranted. It was unlikely that anyone would miss their victim for some time, and even if they did a little digging they already had a way to make it seem as if all was well.

He parked the car in a side lot of the large apartment complex, grabbing his necessary supplies from the back seat: duct tape, two pistols, a lock pick, and a switchblade-just in case, he carefully concealed them within his long trenchcoat and walked up to the front entrance of the building.

The front lobby was rather small and the overall shabbiness of the building made him wonder why someone in their victim's line of work would choose to live in a place like this, he could obviously afford much better. The building was 5 stories tall and didn't even have an elevator. Their victim lived on the 5th floor but he didn't mind the stairs, he had a two hour time window.

He reached the apartment in under 15 minutes and rang the door bell, listening to it echo inside the apartment. When his victim answered the door he placed his hand over his mouth and shoved him back into the apartment, drawing one of his guns from his coat.

* * *

Rebecca fumbled through her purse, searching for her wallet to pay for the coffee she had ordered. After looking like a fool, standing in front of the counter for around 5 minutes before finally finding her wallet. It turned out that she was 50 cents short since she had to shell out some money to buy a sweater since it was so cold both inside and outside of her apartment. Luckily the woman behind her in line gave her the money she needed, so she didn't have to go into work cold and sleepy.

She walked outside the shop just in time to be nearly run over by a jeep as she tried to cross the street. She managed to run to the other side in time to avoid being run over. By now she was pretty sure that today would only get worse from here. Even more so when some rude guy with one arm bumped into her and made her spill her coffee all over the street.

By the time she had arrived at work she was exhausted, only having been able to have a little bit of coffee before it spilled, and her new scarf had blown away in the wind. She had retrieved it though, only after it had landed in a puddle. She sighed as she walked down the stairs to the front door of the office. She only hoped that this day couldn't get any worse.

* * *

He shoved his victim back into his own apartment, closing the door behind them. His eyes had gone wide with terror and he was trying to get him off.

"You are coming with me," he pulled his roll of duct tape from his jacket and used it to secure his victim's wrists.

"Please don't kill me," the victim whimpered, struggling to free his hands.

"Oh don't worry," he wrapped some more duct tape over his mouth, "You're too valuable for that,"

He pulled his squirming victim into the living room of his messy apartment. The kidnapper couldn't help but be disgusted at the general disarray of the place. No only was it messy, but there were stacks of porn all over the floor accompanied by equal amounts of naughty posters adorning the walls. He had no doubts in his mind of what were on the tapes scattered around the TV.

"You disgust me, boy," he said out loud, voicing his disapproval. He pulled a blanket off of the couch and threw his victim onto the floor. "Lie still," he ordered as he wrapped the blanket around him like a cocoon, hiding him from view. "If you move while I'm carrying you I'll shoot," he pressed the barrel of the gun against his face through the blanket to show him he wasn't joking.

He picked up the blanket with his victim inside it and carried it out of the apartment and out to his car, placing him in the back seat and driving away to his hideout.

* * *

"Hey Rebecca," Jimmy greeted her as she walked inside the building. She smiled at him, covering up her bad morning as she sat down in front of the computer to work on her article.

"Hey Beck," Langly said, coming from the kitchen. She rolled her eyes, he had started calling her Beck a couple of weeks ago and she hadn't really had the heart to tell him she hated the nickname. He seemed to like calling her it. She managed to keep her from smacking him by telling herself that at least it wasn't Becky. She had always hated that name, ever since college, and would not tolerate being called that anymore. The last time someone had called her that she ended up kicking him in the crotch. "Wanna come with me to go get Kimmy?" he asked, walking behind where she was sitting.

"Who's Kimmy?" she asked, not having heard that name before.

"A hacker, I need his help to hack into the DOD," he replied, shoving the keys to the van in his pocket. "He hasn't been answering his phone,"

"I need to finish this article," she went back to typing.

"Suit yourself," he walked out the door, closing it behind him with a thud.

"Jimmy lock the door!" Frohike yelled, hearing Langly leave.

Rebecca continued to work on her articles, they were having her do lots of them, for the next hour or so. During the same amount of time Jimmy had managed to: set the kitchen on fire, twice, once with Frohike in it, make a hole in a wall when he was trying to carry a lamp into Byer's room, and nearly crush Byers with said lamp. It seems that he wasn't having a much better day than she was.

About fifteen minutes after Byers had nearly been turned into a pancake, Langly returned, with no Kimmy. This immediately aroused the other two Gunmen's suspicions.

"Where's Kimmy?" Frohike asked from his seat on their ugly red couch.

"He wasn't there. I checked all of his hangouts but he wasn't at any of those either," he walked into his room and came out carrying his trusty laptop. "I'm going to try to see if I can find him,"

"It'll be like a needle in a haystack," Byers reminded him.

"I know but we really need this hack," he opened his laptop and began to type in that quick way that he always did, like he was mad at the keyboard, or like pounding on it like that would make his objective occur faster that way. Rebecca had to admit that Langly did fascinate her and she had caught herself watching him on more than one occasion. Of course there was that little tidbit that kept her from pursuing him; he was her boss. He didn't act like it at all, and technically the four of them were paying her under the table to avoid taxes and all that, but still he was her boss. It would just be awkward, she had always avoided dating co-workers after seeing it ruin so many of her friends.

She sighed, turning back to her computer and began another article on-what was it again? She glanced down at her paper of notes from which she would compile the story, oh yes-it was to be on a series of abductions occurring around Hershey, PA. Her pet theory was that, since most of the "abductees" were teenagers, it was some sort of elaborate prank. Rebecca idly remembered when nearly her entire senior class participated in a similar prank, convincing most of their teachers that the school lunch was poisoned and that several students had dropped dead as a result. Looking back on it, she had to admit it was quite a cruel prank; but it was something that teenagers found amusing.

However much she believed her idea to be true, she would never share it with the others, they were too addicted to the story. They were too engrossed in the unbelievable, usually, to accept any other explanation until it smacked them in the faces. She typed out the words on the monitor that she really didn't believe but would continue to write because it was her job. Of course, sometimes she thought that maybe it wasn't the Gunmen who were too out there but it was her who was to grounded to believe the unexplained. Sometimes she felt like a regular skeptic, a background in journalism will do that to you.

Trolling the web for some more information she could glean from some of the major news sites, the little pop-up window came up indicating that someone had just sent an e-mail to them. Thank god, she thought, that it didn't' have the annoying 'you've got mail' voice that came along with it. She clicked on it, it was from an e-mail address she didn't recognize and she was just plain curious, a background in journalism will do that to you too.

TO: Manhammer? Rebecca looked at the e-mail address and rolled her eyes, recognizing Langly's Dungeons and Dragons alias. The other name, Badmittionlvr, didn't really sound like a gamer's name. Unless said gamer was over 60 and living in a retirement community in Florida. She continued to read the rest of the message.

SUBJECT: You OWE me...HELP!

Langly, you and your little band of merry girls better get your asses down here right now! I've been kidnapped, they're keeping me captive at a 'Happy Trails Campgrounds', somewhere in Northern Virginia-I think. And they're going to kill me one I finish their hack. I can't type more, they're coming back.

Kimmy

P.S.- My computer is sent to send out embarrassing pictures of you after that prank at last year's D&D convention posthumously, if that gives you any incentive to help me.

Rebecca printed out the e-mail immediately after she had finished reading it, feeling rather triumphant as she had just, by pure accident, done what Langly was still trying to do. While she didn't know where Happy Trails Campgrounds was, she assumed that it could be anywhere from Arizona to Maine, she did know that they were several steps closer to finding Langly's elusive friend than they were a few minutes ago.

"Langly, guess who found Kimmy?" she gloated, holding up the print out of the e-mail for him to see.

"What? How?" he asked, dashing over to where she was sitting and ripping, quite literally-a corner had come off in her hand, the piece of paper from her outstretched hand. "He sent you an e-mail?"

"No, he send you an e-mail," she corrected. "I just happened to be at the computer when it arrived,"

"Where's 'Happy Trails Campgrounds'?" he asked, looking up from the e-mail at her.

"I don't know, I just got the e-mail," she said, pulling up MapQuest. "But I can find out,"

"Let me, you're not good with computers," he ordered, grabbing the mouse.

"I do perfectly fine with computers," she shoed his hand away from the mouse. "And I am capable of using MapQuest,"

"You nearly wiped the memory clean on my laptop last week," he argued, pushing her in the swivel chair away from the computer.

"You're the computer nerd, you should know it's very hard to completely erase memory on a computer," but she rolled her eyes and sat still on the chair, wondering not for the first time why she was so fascinated by him.

"Still, you're not coming near my laptop again," he said possessively, typing on the keyboard with the same ferocity that he had been before.

"Stop bickering, children," Frohike said, coming up behind Langly with Byers right behind him.

"Ignore Langly, he's a bit rude sometimes," Jimmy whispered in her ear as he looked over Byers's shoulder.

"I think he's just PMSing," she whispered back, earning a loud laugh from Jimmy that the three Gunmen didn't notice. It was probably better that they didn't, she didn't really want to explain why Jimmy suddenly started laughing-actually it was more like giggling.

"Found it," Langly declared triumphantly, printing out the MapQuest directions. "We'd better get going, who knows how long Kimmy's got left,"

"I'm coming," Jimmy proclaimed loudly.

"No you're not. We'll be gone a while, you and Rebecca need to stay here and make sure the next issue of The Lone Gunman comes out on time," Byers explained, gathering some items to take along.

"And I'm taking my laptop," Langly called out from his room where he was packing a few t-shirts and other things he would need.

"That just keeps on getting funnier and funnier,"

* * *

The Gunmen had been gone for three hours, venturing out into Virginia to locate Kimmy and leaving Rebecca and Jimmy back at headquarters, she had dubbed it the Bat Cave because it certainly resembled that, to scramble to get the next issue of The Lone Gunmen out on time. Of course, that was what they should be doing. Jimmy was currently sitting on the couch, sulking. And Rebecca had given up on her article for today, just to spite Langly and was currently making a nice 2 o' clock dinner for her and Jimmy. If popcorn, grilled cheese sandwiches, and Pepsi even could be considered dinner.

Her excuse for the lack of actual food in the dinner she was preparing was that the Gunmen didn't keep much food around. Jimmy was the only one that really cooked, Frohike did sometimes too but he wasn't all that good. In fact, judging from the expiration date on the milk in the fridge and the multitude of junk food wrappers on the floor, she guessed that they had been eating take out for at least a week.

While she was on her second attempt to properly cook grilled cheese, she didn't feel bad at all about wasting all of their cheese, the screech of the doorbell startled her and before she really knew what was happening there were two grilled cheese sandwiches stuck on the ceiling. Just as she was marveling her new accomplishment, it takes a great deal of skill to get something stuck on the ceiling, Jimmy opened the door and Yves walked inside, dragging Jimmy along with her.

"We've got a problem," Yves said as Rebecca came out of the kitchen to see who had arrived.

"What?" Jimmy asked, as Yves walked deeper into the offices, walking among shelves and scanning the walls.

"There is another exit isn't there?" Yves asked urgently, hurrying up a bit.

"Yes, why?" asked Rebecca, following Yves around with Jimmy right behind her.

"Because the sooner we can leave the sooner we can all avoid death," her eyes darted to the light gray smoke that was floating in under the main door. "We need to get out now," she grabbed both Jimmy's and Rebecca's arms and pulled them towards a door she just saw.

"That leads to a...a...," Rebecca started to tell her that that was a closet but she felt a sudden drowsiness overcome her, as she struggled to stay on her feet. She heard Yves swear and Jimmy express his confusion as all three of them hit the floor. Soon after a great curtain of black settled over the three of them as a man dressed in a nice suit opened the door and walked in with a gas mask over his face.

* * *

Pulling into the parking lot of the now abandoned 'Happy Trails Campground' the Lone Gunmen looked around for any signs that may lead them to Kimmy before his kidnappers had the chance to kill him. They parked their van and got out, surveying the area but not seeing anything that might be useful. Then after about ten minutes of searching-

"Hey guys!" Frohike exclaimed. "I found something,"

"What?" Langly and Byers came running up behind him, peering over his shoulder as he pointed out the tire tracks.

"A car came through here recently," he pushed some grass out of the way of the tire tracks to get a better look of them.

"Let's follow it. Right now it's our best lead," Byers suggested.

"Right," Langly said, following Byers and Frohike through the waist high grass growing wild around the parking lot. It was difficult to follow the path since someone had tried to erase it. The coverup seemed to have been done hastily as if they needed to be somewhere quickly, either that or they didn't really care.

After walking along that path for two hours, and sincerely wishing that they had decided to drive the van but convincing themselves that it would only be a little further and going back would take unnecessary time, they arrived at a small shack perched onto of a steep hill. They struggled with that and nearly caused a landslide before the reached the shack at last.

They could see inside the rotting structure without even having to open the equally decrepit door. Whole chunks of wood were gone from the walls and within they could see quite a surprising sight, a fairly new silver TV set was sitting on the ground attached to a portable generator.

"What the?" Langly was the first to see the TV and he ran around to the front and opened the door, walking inside. He saw that the TV was one of the newer kinds with a VCR built into it.

"What is this?" Byers asked, walking inside, following Langly with Frohike behind him.

"Should we turn it on?" Langly pondered out loud, as Frohike reached from behind him and turned on the power button.

"Might as well," he replied, noticing that there was a tape lying next to the TV. "We should play it,"

"What do you think is on it?" Byers asked.

"Wont know until we press," he put the tape in the VCR and pressed "play".

The, previously blue, TV screen came to life. It flashed to black and then showed the text 'Welcome Lone Gunmen'.

"Someone knew we were coming," Langly said, pointing out the obvious.

Then a foreign face appeared on the screen, it was a man with short blonde hair and matching mustache. None of the Gunmen recognized him, they hadn't seen him before. He was standing on what appeared to be a dock on a lake or a river. There was green foliage around him and you could see the other shore not too far away from the one the man was standing on.

"I'm sure you do not recognize me. You shouldn't, it was only recently that I discovered you. Specifically you, Richard-" Langly twitched noticeably at the mention of his first name. "When I discovered that our little victim," at this point the camera panned around to show a unconscious Kimmy lying on his side in the wet grass "had sent an e-mail to you. I figured it might be fun to get you three involved. I seldom have any fun these days," he smiled and laughed to himself. "I didn't even really need the money I got from his hack. I just wanted the challenge of kidnapping him, which wasn't much of a challenge at all. So now, here we are. You at the shack at the old campgrounds, and me at an unnamed dock. Now this doesn't seem much fun so I'd thought that I would throw some more people in, make it a game,"

At this point in the video the camera moved again to show Kimmy, but then moved a little further to show the still bodies of Yves, Rebecca, and Jimmy.

"That son of a bitch," Frohike swore, shaking his head.

"This is just sick," Byers commented, his voice thick with disgust.

"Now, here's the game," another large and bulky man walked into the view of the camera. "My college here will load these four," he gestured to the four lying on the grass. "Into this Plexiglas container," he pointed to a very large container about 8 feet long 5 feet wide and 6 feet deep. "And then we will drop them into this," he gestured to the lake behind him. "Now you see the game, if you can't figure out where your friends are 'buried' before seven o' clock on Wednesday, that's tomorrow boys. They'll die. You see we're going to be pumping air into the box," the camera moved to the Plexiglas box again and they could clearly see a bunch of air tanks lying next to it. "They'll die"

"Bastard," Langly muttered through clenched teeth.

"Of course, it wouldn't be very sporting if I didn't give you a clue would it?" he said, smirking the entire time as the burly man dropped the bodies into the container unceremoniously as if he was dealing with a sack of potatoes. "So here you go, the clue is 'There once was a man from Peru, who dreamed he was eating his shoe, he woke with a fright, in the middle of the night to find that his dream had come true," The three Gunmen shared confused looks. "Ta da for now," he waved and the screen went black.

"I can't believe this. What kind of clue was that?" Langly was angry, this guy was doing this for no other reason than he was bored? The sick freak.

"Well, think about it. It's obviously a poem," Byers said, as angry as Langly but trying to stay calm in an effort to help them find their friends.

"Maybe it's Poem River," Frohike suggested.

"Or Poem Lake," Langly added, running out of the shack. "We have to get going as soon as we can, we don't have much time,"

* * *

Groggily Rebecca lifted her head above the hard surface it was lying on. For a moment she thought she was still at the Lone Gunmen offices but before long she realized that that was definitely not the case. After all, one generally didn't see fishes swimming by just feet from their heads in the Lone Gunmen offices. She sat up quickly and noticed that they were underwater. And by they, she meant Jimmy, Yves, her, and someone she didn't recognize whom she assumed to be Kimmy.

The second thing she noticed besides the fact that they were who knows how far underwater, the water was so murky she couldn't really tell, was the complicated system of scuba tanks and other pipes all along one face of their Plexiglas box. She could hear the whir of a fan and assumed it was pumping air into the box and taking it out. Those sadistic bastards, whoever had put them here.

No one else was awake yet she noticed, wondering how they had gotten here and where here was. Something she found funny though was the fact that Jimmy was lying on top of Yves, drooling onto her top.

"We're all gonna die," she said, sadly as she looked around at what was looking increasingly more like a coffin every second.

TO BE CONTINUED...in part two


	6. The Mystery of the Missing Geek Part Two

Title: The Mystery of the Missing Geek- Part Two  
Author: Dru  
E-mail: Rating: PG-13  
Summary: Trapped at a box at the bottom of a lake, Yves, Jimmy, Kimmy, and Rebecca contemplate death while the Gunmen race to find them in time. Langly/OC  
Disclaimers: However much I may wish, I do not own our favorite conspiracy theorists. Still, the only things in this story that I do own are Rebecca Morris and the plot. This is part six in the 'Objects out of Place' series.  
A/N: I'm typing this while listening to the Phantom of the Opera, well at least the high school orchestra's version of it. I don't have the actual cd...-tear-. Also I was writing this with my cat sitting near the computer, which was why it took so long to write this. He kept trying to attack my fingers as I typed. Yes, I do have the cat from hell.

* * *

There are things one thinks about if they see death as imminent, these things do not generally include grilled cheese sandwiches. However, when you are trapped at the bottom of a lake, as was the case for Rebecca Morris, and you haven't eaten since the night before, food might be something that is on your mind. This may occur also when your stomach decides to growl loud enough for everyone in the Plexiglas coffin to hear her.

She wouldn't have been surprised to learn she had been voted out of the coffin after that.

She giggled at that thought, being very anti-reality TV as she was. The other members of the coffin looked at her strangely, not really seeing any reason to laugh at their predicament. Now, this, she thought bitterly, was a die predicament. Unlike flying, they all knew that they would die, the only question was when. Unfortunately, there was no digital clock counting down the minutes before the air tanks stopped pumping air.

Rebecca had been the first one to wake up after Jimmy, Yves, and her had been kidnapped from the Lone Gunmen offices. Jimmy had woken up next, then Yves, and finally last was the person she had assumed to be Kimmy. It had turned out that she had been right, he was Kimmy.

None of them knew why they were here, Kimmy claimed all that he knew was the hack they wanted him to perform-steal millions from an online bank. He had done the hack, at gunpoint he was sure to mention that over and over again, and then they knocked him out. Oh had he left out the part about them forcing him to hack at gunpoint? No, he had mentioned that at least four different times.

And by now Rebecca was really starting to get hungry, thinking of those grilled cheese sandwiches sticking to the ceiling, and wondered sadly if the Gunmen even knew they were gone. On top of her hunger, it was extremely cold, it being winter and them being in a Plexiglas coffin at the bottom of a lake. She was curled up into a ball, hugging her knees to her chest for warmth.

"I could keep you warm," Kimmy offered, scooting over to be closer to her.

"Touch me and die," she replied bitterly, wondering if there was any possible way for this day to get any worse.

"I'm going to anyway," he retorted, but moved away from her and into his own corner.

"Don't think like that," said Jimmy, trying to be reassuring. "The guys will find us, I know it," he was confident in his belief that help was on the way.

"What makes you think they've even noticed we're missing yet," Rebecca said, still bitterly. "Hell, what makes you think that they're not lying in a box just a couple of feet that way. We wouldn't even know,"

"Thinking pessimistic wont help anyone," Yves jumped in. "And, judging by the air tanks I think that someone is playing a game. And we're the bait to lure your little friends into some kind of trap. After all, if they just wanted to kill us they wouldn't put us in the tanks,"

"Still, what makes you think they'll plan to let us go once the guys fall into the 'trap'," she leaned back against the wall of the coffin. "They'll never find our bodies,"

* * *

"I just can't find a Poem Lake. It just doesn't exist" Langly said, banging on the keyboard out of frustration.

"It has to, he wants us to follow his trail of bread crumbs. He wouldn't give us an impossible first clue," Byers tried to calm Langly. It would do no good for him to be so frustrated.

"Well, then what are we going to do?" Langly asked out of desperation.

"We'll just keep trying. It's all we can do," Byers said reassuringly. "And just hope that we find something,"

* * *

Another hour, maybe it had been longer since none of them had a watch on, had passed. That was another hour that they didn't have left to live. Although, it could have been argued that waiting for death was not really living at all. There was no real plan, other than to wait to be rescued. Which, Kimmy had so kindly pointed out, was not a very good plan at all.

They really didn't have anything to occupy their time as they leaned against the walls of their coffin, when they had been kidnapped anything they had on them was removed. Even Yves, who almost always something that would be of use, was stripped of everything she had.

"It's over now," Kimmy commented after Yves had discovered that she didn't have anything that would be of use. "It's only a matter of time,"

"I'd agree that is the general feeling around here," Rebecca added as she examined all of the air tanks along the outside of the wall nearest her.

"What are you doing?" Jimmy asked.

"Trying to see if there is any way to dislodge the air tanks," she replied. "No doubt they have weights attached to them to keep us underwater. If we can manage to get them off then, since the box is full of air, we'll float to the surface and surely someone will notice us,"

"Let me see," Jimmy crawled over next to her, followed by Yves and Kimmy who were curious to see if Rebecca's plan could work.

"I don't see any way to dislodge it," Yves said, examining the complicated device.

"I'm going to try something. Get away," Jimmy ordered, and then proceeded to ram the side of the box with his shoulder, in an attempt to get off the air tanks.

"Jimmy stop," Yves ordered, placing her hand on his shoulder.

"Why?" he asked, stopping anyway.

"I hear something," she explained, sticking her hand in the pipe that pumped air into the box. After a moment or so, she pulled out a very sharp dagger. "This," she held it up for emphasis. "was rattling around as Jimmy was banging against the wall,"

"There's another one," Kimmy pulled out an identical one from the other pipe.

"Why are they here?" Jimmy asked, taking the dagger from Kimmy's hand and examining it.

"He wants us to kill each other off," Rebecca guessed. "Psychological torture,"

"Yes, I do assume that is the purpose of these," she stood up and examined the place where the wall met the ceiling. "However, I know how we can use them to escape,"

"How?" Rebecca stood up too, trying to grasp her idea.

"See," she pointed to the place where the two panes of Plexiglas met. "They're not melted together just sealed. I'm fairly certain that we can slide the knives into this space and take the top off and swim to the surface,"

"How do we know that we're not too far under the surface?" Rebecca asked, visibly nervous about the plan.

"Simply put, we don't," she replied. "However, it is a better plan than sit here and wait to die,"

"I see a flaw in that plan, other than the obvious one," Rebecca added, sheepishly.

"What?" Yves asked.

"I can't swim,"

* * *

"I just don't get his clue," Langly complained after watching the mysterious tape for the eleventh time. "It's just a poem, nothing else," he sighed and put his head in his hands.

"I know you're frustrated but you have to think," ordered Byers. "There has to be something else to it that we're not seeing. Something else to the clue,"

"What the hell it is then?" he asked, rewinding the tape to watch it again.

"I don't know. But we only have," he glanced at the clock. "eight hours before they run out of air,"

"According to the psycho on the tape," said Langly, watching it for the twelfth time. "Who knows, they could be dead already,"

* * *

"You can't swim?" asked Kimmy, incredulous.

"Well you wouldn't be able to either if a vacuum cleaner nearly drowned you when you were four," Rebecca replied, angrily.

"Vacuums are inanimate objects, how could they make a conscious decision to try to drown you?" Kimmy asked. "Unless it's some sort of AI vacuum,"

"Very funny," she stated, folding her arms across her chest. "I got tangled up in the chord,"

"And then what? It vacuumed itself to the nearest large body of water?"

"It actually just fell off of the dock,"

"Why was a vacuum cleaner on a dock?"

"Shut up both of you," Yves ordered, tired of their antics. "Rebecca, you can just hold on to me and kick to the surface,"

"Right," she nodded.

"I can't swim either," Kimmy added, hopefully.

"Well then you can hold on to Jimmy," Yves suggested.

"Never mind I just remembered that I can swim," he said quickly.

"Then it's all settled. Jimmy you start on that side," she pointed to the opposite wall. "And I'll start cutting here,"

"Okay," he dashed to the other side of the coffin, nearly running into the wall.

"On the count of three," Yves ordered. "One, two, three," and they both slid their knives into the crack and almost immediately water came dripping into the box, and began to fill it. A very anxious Rebecca was standing very close to Yves, as the water washed over her ankles.

"Hurry," she pleaded.

"Almost there," nearly as soon as Yves said Jimmy forced the top of the coffin off and water flooded in, engulfing the four of them. Fortunately Rebecca was able to grab onto Yves and they began to swim upwards.

After only a short while, and before they had even gotten to the point where they could even see the surface, Rebecca's lungs began to burn with lack of air. It was incredibly painful and it took all of her self-control to keep from trying to take a breath of water. She could barely keep kicking but, noticing Yves slowing down, she tried to keep going.

She had lost sight of both Jimmy and Kimmy and had no clue if they were even heading in the right direction. The last thing she remembered before blackness took her was seeing the water become lighter and warmer.

* * *

Bright light burned her eyes as she coughed up water. She was lying on a hard surface, and as she looked around Rebecca saw that she was lying on a boat with Yves kneeling over her.

"What happened?" she asked, groggily and gasping for air to fill her aching lungs.

"You passed out as we reached the surface," Yves explained. "We were picked up by a boat and I revived you,"

"Thanks," she coughed again and a little bit of water was expelled from her mouth. "Jimmy and Kimmy?" she asked, looking around and not seeing them.

"I didn't see them," Yves said apologetically. "But we aren't far from shore maybe they made it there,"

"I hope so," Rebecca said, looking off to the shore. "Hey," she shouted pointing to the nearest beach. "There they are," she exclaimed.

"Yes they are there. Can you take us there?" she asked the man piloting the boat.

"Yes, I sure can ma'am," he said in a southern drawl, turning the small boat to the beach.

"Jimmy, Kimmy!" Rebecca yelled, waving her arms to try to get their attention. She could clearly see both of them turn around to face her.

"Rebecca, Yves!'" Jimmy shouted back, waving at them as they neared into very shallow water.

"This is far as I can really go in this boat," the man said, but they had already jumped out and ran onto the beach.

"We did it," Rebecca said, gleefully.

"We made it out," Kimmy exclaimed, also very happy.

"Yeah, well where are we?" Jimmy asked, looking around until he saw a wood sign with painted letters carved into it. "'Welcome to Lake Peru, Virginia'," he read off of it.

"Ok, and how do we get back to D.C.?" Rebecca surveyed the area.

"There's a campground about half a mile that way," the man on the boat said from beneath his blonde mustache, as the pointed to the well worn pathway leading from the beach. "Lake Peru Campgrounds. I bet they have a phone you could use,"

"Thank you, we'll go there," Yves said, walking onto the path with Jimmy, Kimmy, and Rebecca behind her.

* * *

Later that night, Rebecca Morris lay on her bed half-asleep. She was exhausted but she didn't want to fall asleep for fear of the nightmares that her mind would surely conjure up after her ordeal today. However, she knew that she would need to sleep eventually, she just figured that the later the better. After all, there was no way in hell that she was going to work the next day.

The telephone on her bedside table rang loudly, chasing any thoughts of sleep from her head.

"Hey Rebecca," it was her next door neighbor, one of the few friends she had other than the Gunmen and Jimmy. "A bunch of us are going to his new club that just opened. Wanna come?"

"I don't really have anything to wear,"

"Don't worry, I've got tons of dresses,"

"Then sure, I'd love to come,"

THE END


	7. The Hotel Room

Title: The Hotel Room  
Author: Dru  
E-mail: Rating: PG-13  
Summary: Yves is willing to pay the Gunmen a large sum of money if they help her get incriminating evidence on an English business man. However, the only way to get it makes Langly very jealous. Langly/OC

Disclaimers: However much I may wish, I do not own our favorite conspiracy theorists. Still, the only things in this story that I do own are Rebecca Morris and the plot. This is part seven in the 'Objects out of Place' series.

A/N: I apologize for the long wait for this to come out, I'm working on another fan fiction at the same time at this one and I have been on vacation in Lake George for the past 7 days and just got back an hour ago. Funny thing about that, coming back...I should have been back about five hours ago but we got rear ended by a speeding semi on I-78 in Jersey (that place is a death trap) and had to go through the whole insurance hell and getting a rental car...it was awful.

* * *

It wasn't really late, only ten o' clock, regardless Langly felt like he was going to collapse. He hadn't been sleeping well lately, ever since Jimmy, Yves, Rebecca, and Kimmy had been kidnapped. They had escaped on their own, and had called them once they had reached a campsite near where they had been dropped. Lake Peru, Lake Peru, it was so obvious and none of them even saw it. Not one of them had even though of it being one of the words in the poem, they assumed the poem in it's entirety was the clue. 

He was pretending to be researching his article, not that he even remembered what he had said it would be about. Lately he had been rather distracted, by a certain girl with black hair. Although he considered it unfair to refer to her as a girl, she was twenty-eight but still four years younger than him. They picked on each other all the time, it made him feel like he was back in grade school and when you liked a girl you made fun of her. He wasn't in grade school anymore and he didn't know if their little bickering meant anything.

The door bell buzzed loudly, disrupting Langly's deep thoughts. Whoever was at the door was impatient because they kept on ringing it and ringing it until Frohike and Byers went to open it.

"What are you doing here?" Frohike asked, opening the door wider to let Yves in.

"I need your help, as much as I hate to say it," she replied, stepping inside their offices. "Where's Rebecca?"

"Home, she left hours ago," Langly said, getting up from the computer where he really wasn't doing much of anything at all.

"Well call her," Yves ordered.

"Why should I? And why should we even help you?" he challenged her, folding his arms across his chest in a show of defiance.

"Because I will pay you one hundred thousand dollars," Yves pulled out a wad of bills from her skin tight suit. "Now call her,"

* * *

The red numbers on the alarm clock glowed 10:04, but Rebecca Morris ignored them, burying herself under her numerous layers of blankets and continued her futile attempt to sleep. Her next door neighbor had offered to take her out to a club tonight as she had done for the past week, but she declined figuring that she should at least attempt to catch some more sleep. Now she was regretting refusing her offer since she couldn't get to sleep, and there was nothing really good on TV. 

In the distant place that was her living room she heard a phone ring but decided to ignore it, not really wanting to get up and find out who it was. She figured that it was come telemarketer, no one else ever really called her. Although both her parents and all three of her siblings were still alive and she was on good terms with them, they never called or visited; they all had their own lives.

The phone rang again and again she ignored it, deciding to give up her pitiful attempt at sleep and get up and do something more productive than lying in bed and stewing in memories of her near death experience. It didn't help that it was underwater, yet another event to add to her Why-I'm-Afraid-Of-Large-Bodies-Of-Water list. Sometimes she felt her phobia was justified, and now she knew that it was, first the vacuum cleaner incident and now this. She wasn't afraid of water so much as she was afraid of drowning.

Once more the phone rang and she just turned up The Wallflowers to block it out, both her neighbors were gone at night and no one lived below her so she figured she could play it as loud as she wanted. She idly wondered if The Wallflowers was one of the bands that Langly liked, and almost as soon as she thought it she mentally smacked herself. Rebecca knew very well she couldn't get involved with Langly, mainly because she was afraid of the whole getting hurt thing, ever since her last relationship ended badly because neither her nor her ex would give up their jobs for each other; which pretty much said a lot about their relationship.

She spent about twenty minutes doing nothing much at all but listening to her music and sometimes singing aloud to it in her voice that would put nails on a chalkboard to shame. It felt very liberating to do nothing but sing along to songs and to forget everything but The Wallflowers singing about some song telling people to get out of the water. Then there was a loud knock on the door and some people shouting from the hall.

"Why didn't you answer the phone?" Yves demanded, forcing her way into the apartment as soon as Rebecca had opened the door. She was rather surprised to see the Gunmen, Jimmy and Yves walk into her apartment. And she nearly turned bright red when she realized that she was in her flannel deer pajamas and that her hair was a complete mess.

"I was-" she paused, thinking and wishing that Langly would stop staring at her pajamas. "-busy,"

"Oh, do you have company. Other than the incredibly loud, and bad, music that you were playing?" Yves set down the canvas bag she was carrying down on the couch.

"No," she leaned over, trying to see what was in the bag.

"Put this on," Yves pulled out a black dress and threw it at her.

"What? Why," Rebecca asked, examining the dress.

"I told you to put the dress on and why is because you are attending a ball in under two hours and you must be prepared," she explained. "Now put it on,"

"Why don't you?" she asked, still looking at the sparkly dress.

"Because you will need to get yourself invited to a man's hotel room and steal some documents, and that man would recognize me," she sat down on the couch. "Now put it on, I don't want to have to ask you again,"

"First of all you never asked, and why not just break into his hotel room?" she asked yet another question, folding up the dress and draping it over her arm.

"Because there are alarms that would go off and I don't know where they are and I don't have time to find them before he gets rid of the documents and because if they go off they would alert a large number of guards. I wouldn't have time to retrieve the documents and get out before they arrive," she was quite obviously getting impatient.

"And I'll have time to get out?"

"Yes, you have sufficient time between the time you break out and the time the guards arrive to get to where we'll be parked," she said, growing annoyed. "Now put the dress on,"

"Fine," she turned and went into her bathroom, quickly putting the dress on and removing her pajamas. She was very glad to be rid of those, they were old and ratty. Rebecca looked at herself in the mirror, the dress was beautiful. It was made out of a velvety material and had lots of sparkles that caught the light, the upper half was done in a halter top style and was daringly low cut while the bottom nearly reached the floor and had a slit in it that reached up a little bit past her knees. It looked very good on her and brought to mind awkward school dances where she hadn't worn anything half this nice.

After twirling around a couple of times just to see the bottom of the dress spread out and fly up a little bit, she went back into the living room. Everyone looked surprised, except Yves she just looked amused.

"Damn," Frohike said, staring as were the other three boys.

"You do look very nice Rebecca," Byers complemented her, being as polite as ever.

"Yeah, you look...very...what they said," Langly added, practically drooling.

"If you four don't pick your jaws up from the floor they'll gather dust," Yves commented, smirking. "Although I must agree with Byers, I'm sure more boys would notice you if you dressed suitably more often,"

"Thanks, I'm not quite sure if that's a compliment or not but I'll be optimistic," Rebecca smiled, glad to have all the attention.

"Now we have to do your hair and makeup," Yves led her into the bathroom.

"Damn and here I thought that I was getting off light,"

* * *

It was nearing midnight as the van pulled into the parking lot of the fancy hotel where the ball was being held. Rebecca exited the van, her hair once disheveled and messy is now in neat curls. She even has on a few pieces of jewelry, all of them serving another purpose than the normal. Her silver earrings allow the Gunmen, Jimmy, and Yves back in the van to talk to her while her necklace allows her to talk to them and also provides the guys in the van with a live video of what's going on. 

"I just hope I have past midnight," she muttered to herself as she ran, or tried to run since the shoes Yves had given her were already starting to hurt her feet, to the hotel entrance.

"Ma'am where do you think you're going?" a guard stopped her as she was trying to get into the ballroom.

"Into the ball," she pointed to the doors leading to the event.

"Invitation only," he said gruffly.

"I have one, she pulled the false one Yves had given her out of her purse and showed it to the guard.

"Of course, go right on in," he courteously opened the door and allowed her to enter, a complete change from his earlier attitude towards her.

The ballroom looked like something out of a fairy tale: two of the walls were covered in floor to ceiling windows, there was a marble stair case, complete with matching dance floor, a small orchestra playing classical music, there was even a large chandelier. She held her breath in awe as she descended the staircase, feeling a lot like Cinderella and smiled knowing that it was past midnight and she would be here for a while.

"It's rather ostentatious, don't you think," a voice said from behind her.

"I like it," she replied, whirling around to see the man standing behind her. "It's fairy tale-esque,"

"That is not a word," he said, jokingly as he handed her a drink. She looked at it for a moment, he looked like the man that Yves had showed her the photograph of, the one she was supposed to find, how lucky.

"That's him," Yves said through her earring. "Flirt with him, it's not hard, I know," Now that her suspicions were confirmed, she took the drink from his hand.

"I know it's not a word. I made it up," she smiled, pretending to take a sip.

"Creative, I like it," he drank about half of his drink in one big gulp, grimacing due to the strongness of the alcohol. Rebecca knew that she shouldn't have any, she got drunk incredibly easily; and being drunk would not be beneficial to the mission. "Of course, I like beautiful women too,"

"Really?" once more she pretended to take a sip. "Well I guess one out of two isn't that bad,"

"Don't sell yourself short, love," he said, his British accent becoming slurred from the alcohol. "Hey, I have an idea,"

"Must be a new occurrence for him," she heard Langly mumble through her earring. She would have rolled her eyes, but then he would notice and think she was rolling her eyes at him; which she would have done had she not had to get this guy to take her to his room. So instead of rolling her eyes she smiled at Langly's show of jealousy.

"What?" she asked, trying to keep from laughing at his comical pose. He was standing with his head tilted towards the ceiling, his hand on his chin as he stroked an imaginary beard.

"Let's dance," he tossed his, now empty, glass in a trash can and grabbed her arm, pulling her closer to him.

"Sure," she placed her, still full, glass on the tray next to the can designated for glassware. "Let's," she smiled more when she heard Langly mutter what she believed to be a curse word over the microphone. Rebecca couldn't really tell since it was so quiet.

"Stop acting like a jealous child," Yves reprimanded Langly, this time she was sure of what was being said.

Rebecca tried to ignore the heavy stench of alcohol on her partner's breath as they danced. Of course, he was so drunk the dance was pretty much them just swaying back and forth to the music which was intended for some sort of Waltz.

"I hate these things, they're so formal," he whispered in her ear, his lips hovering near her ear as if he were going to kiss her there.

"Then let's leave," she pulled away from him. "And go somewhere less in your words ostentatious,"

"I like the way you think," he placed his hand on her waist and led her towards the exit. And once more she was nearly positive that Langly had whispered a string of curse words into the microphone, acting ,as Yves had put it, like a jealous child. "My hotel room is nice,"

"Your hotel room it is,"

* * *

"Langly, you're going to distract her," Yves reminded him, taking the microphone out of his hands. "If you don't stop acting so juvenile," 

"I'm not being juvenile," he protested, trying to grab the microphone back.

"Yes, you are," she insisted, keeping the microphone out of the reach of Langly. "You're acting very jealous, perhaps you wish you were the one taking Rebecca to your room?"

"That creep doesn't deserve her," he mumbled.

"And you do?"

"Bite me," Langly muttered, slinking off and trying to get as far away from Yves as he could which in the van was less than five feet.

"Juvenile? Of course not," Yves said sarcastically as she turned the microphone on and addressed Rebecca. "You're looking for a manila folder, it should be marked Project Penny. And don't forget to knock him out with the sodium penathanol before you begin your search,"

Rebecca heard Yves but couldn't reply, couldn't tell her that they had gone over this a million times and that she knew exactly what she would do. If she did her companion might suspect that she was either crazy or wired. That would not bode well for the mission. They reached his hotel room quickly, it was on the third floor and right next to the stairwell the numbers 345 written hanging on it in gold fancy letters nailed to the door.

"Murder central," she muttered, as he used his electronic key to open the door.

"What was that?" he asked, pushing the door open to let her inside.

"Nothing, it's just something that I saw on a TV show," replied Rebecca, walking into the room which was every bit as fancy as the ballroom. She noticed a stack of manila folders sitting on the coffee table and figured that the folder containing the information about Project Penny, which Yves had told them was a plot to smuggle opium into America, would be in that stack.

"Well, here we are," he said, pulling her to him; they were so close that her chest was nearly touching his stomach. Now that she was in she could do what she came here to do and get out. She quickly reached into her purse and pulled out the sodium penathanol disguised as lipstick and injected him with it, knocking him out quickly. He fell to the floor with a thud.

"Well done," Yves voice said from the earring. "Now find the project,"

"I see a stack of folders over there on the coffee table," she walked over to the glass table and began to go through the folders, looking for the one she needed. "I see you found a way to keep Langly quiet," she added.

"Yes, I managed to,"

"I found it," Rebecca grabbed one of the folders she had scattered around. Printed one it in bold red letters were the words: PENNY PROJECT.

"Good now get out of there," Yves ordered. "We're still parked in the garage,"

"Right," she said, taking the folder and pushing open the door as the walked out into the hallway. By the time she had reached the van her feet felt even worse and she was cursing the shoes, they were obviously a few sizes too small.

"Thank you," Yves grabbed the folder as soon as she got into the van.

"I'm getting these shoes from hell off," she grimaced as she pulled them off of her feet which were now pretty red. "That went well,"

"It did, even with Langly's jealousy," she smirked.

"I was not jealous," Langly shouted angrily as they pulled out of the parking lot.

"It was sweet that you were Langly," she reached over and kissed him on the cheek. He turned bright red and Rebecca giggled.

"He has probably never been kissed by a gal before," Yves stated, still smirking.

"Shut up already,"

THE END


	8. The Nursing Home

Title: The Nursing Home  
Author: Dru  
Rating: PG-13  
Summary: People are going missing in the area around the Meadow Arms nursing home, and it's up to the Gunmen to figure out why. What they don't know is that investigating it will land Langly in hot water, quite literally. Langly/OC  
Disclaimers: However much I may wish, I do not own our favorite conspiracy theorists. The only things in this story that I do own are Rebecca Morris and the plot. This is part eight in the 'Objects out of Place' series.

* * *

"You are drunk," Rebecca Morris said into her white plastic phone. "Completely and utterly pissed,"

"You, my dear Rebbie have been spending entirely too much time with April," her brother replied from the other end of the phone call, somewhere in nowherseville North Dakota talking to her for the first time in years. "She's starting to rub off on you,"

"Not true, I've only met her once and that was on your wedding day," she complained, tossing a piece of kettle corn into her mouth. "Where is she by the way? Lose her in Illinois?"

"Very funny. For your information she is in our hotel room, sleeping," he answered, standing at the pay phone outside of his hotel room. "We're heading off early in the morning,"

"You're practically a slave driver Jamie," she replied, jokingly as she pulled a blanket over her to shield her from the cold temperatures of her apartment; thanks to the shoddy heating. "You'd better let her rest. Not all of us have your ability to function on three or less hours of sleep,"

"I hear you're catching up on me. You know that mother is worried sick about you. You never call her anymore," he said in a worried tone of voice.

"I'm fine. You don't have to play the big brother," she wrapped the blanket tighter around herself. "I'm just a bit sick,"

"So, I have April, Charlotte has Brendon, and even Jessica has Wesley," he listed off the names of their siblings and their spouses. "What about you? You're the only Morris to remain unwed,"

"Oh, you want to know if I have a boyfriend do you? Is that where this is gong?" she asked, flicking some more pieces of popcorn into her mouth.

"Well, yes. I would hope you would tell us all before you got married," he snickered. "So do you? Or are you going to be an old spinster?"

"You know what? As a matter of fact I do have a boyfriend," she blurted out, knowing that she didn't have a boyfriend; but he was all the way in North Dakota what could he do about it?

"Really? And what is his name?" he asked.

"His name is Richard," she smacked herself for saying Langly's first name since there was no way a relationship would develop between them.

"And his last name?" he asked once more.

"Langly, Richard Langly," once again she smacked herself for using Langly's name as her nonexistent boyfriend.

"Well, then. I'll just have one of my friends look him up, see if he's real or not," he said, pulling out a pad of paper to write the name down. "So it's L-A-N-G-L-Y?"

"Yes," she said, annoyed. Rebecca could hear his pen scratching on the paper from the other side of the line, then she heard some short beeps: she had another call. "Sorry I've got to go. There's someone calling me, chances are it's my boyfriend," she hung up on him and was immediately transferred to the new call.

"Beck?" sure enough it was Langly, not that he was her boyfriend or anything.

"Yeah it's me," she shivered. "What's up?"

"Pack some clothes," he ordered. "We're going to Florida,"

* * *

"You guys better explain to me why you dragged me off of my nice comfy couch at midnight to pack some clothes and head to Florida," Rebecca demanded, carrying a duffel bag full of clothes and a carry-on bag with several novels and money. She had hastily dressed in jeans and an old top because Langly had pressed her about the urgency of getting moving quickly.

"Several tourists have gone missing in northern Florida, around a nursing home called Meadow Arms," Langly explained, grabbing her duffel bag and giving it to the person at the desk to put with the other luggage.

"And this merited me getting up?" she asked. "And thanks,"

"The tourists vanish every other Monday," he added. "We figure that the police are being bribed to not investigate since they're not really doing anything. And that in itself merits an investigation,"

"Plus, it's Sunday," Frohike jumped in. "That means the next tourist will go missing tomorrow,"

"You could have said that over the phone," she complained. "Fair warning if anyone tries waking me up on the plane ride I rip their heads off," she muttered, walking with Langly and the rest of the Gunmen to board the plane.

"Why would I do that? You look so cute when you sleep," Langly commented.

"You're so sweet," she smiled and sat down in her seat which was between Langly and Byers, Frohike and Jimmy were sitting in the row behind them. Before they had even taken off, Rebecca had fallen asleep with her head on Langly's shoulder and it didn't seem that he minded.

* * *

"Welcome to (insert name of Northern Florida airport here) Airport," the voice of the pilot said over the intercom, waking Rebecca from what was probably the deepest she had slept since the incident with the box. The fact that her head was on Langly's shoulder was probably the reason why. When she woke up she realized that he too had fallen asleep and his head was resting on top of hers.

"Langly wake up we're there," she whispered, not being able to move her head since his was on it.

"Wha?" he lifted his head up and when he realized the position they had been in he turned bright red from embarrassment. "Oh, sorry,"

"Don't apologize," she said, stretching her arms out above her head. "You're comfy," If it was even possible Langly turned even more red at that statement, he looked like a lobster with lone blonde hair. Rebecca stood up, grabbing her carry-on bag and going to join the line of people that were exiting the plane.

"Th thanks," he stammered, following her and grabbing his own carry-on bag that contained his laptop and other hacking supplies.

"Come on you two lovebirds, the next disappearance should happen today," said Frohike, pushing his way past them and off of the plane.

"Shut up Dohikey," Langly muttered under his breath as he hurried off the plane after him. Rebecca, Byers, and Jimmy followed them at a much slower pace that didn't involve shoving people back into their seats.

It was much warmer in Florida than it had been up in D.C., for the first time in months Rebecca wasn't wearing a heavy jacket or wrapping a blanket tight around her. It wasn't summer weather, but much better than winter back home. Home, since when had she seen D.C. as home? She supposed it was when she unpacked all of her things and knew she'd be here for a while.

"Wow, it's so much warmer down here," Jimmy proclaimed, rushing over to the luggage conveyor belt to grab all of their bags. "No one's stolen any of them,"

"Were you worried?" Rebecca asked, taking her old and worn out duffel bag from his hands.

"Well, yeah. I've had loads of stuff stolen at airports," he explained, handing each of the Gunmen their own bag until he was left with his own piece of luggage, a dark green rolling suitcase.

"Really? I travel all the time and it's never happened to me," she yawned, covering her mouth with her hand.

"You still tired? You were sleeping the whole flight," Jimmy asked, slightly worried.

"You sound like my brother. I'm always tired when I wake up," she explained. "Coffee usually helps," she added, eyeing the Starbucks in the food court.

"I think all of us could use some breakfast before we go to the motel," Byers suggested.

"Definitely," Rebecca agreed, walking towards the food court and to her beloved Starbucks with the Gunmen right behind them. As soon as they got inside they split up, each going to their preferred type of food. Jimmy went into KFC, Rebecca into Starbucks, Langly into Burger King, Byers into Panera Bread, and Frohike went to a small restaurant's all-you-can-eat-buffet.

About half an hour later, after they had eaten their fill and were quite content, they boarded a bus that would be stopping a half-mile away from their dingy motel. On the way, Rebecca, who was sitting next to Langly, just stared out the window at all of the palm trees and the sunny weather. It reminded her of LA, without all the buildings and traffic, and stirred up a feeling of longing for her old home. She found it strange how she couldn't wait to get out of LA when she lived there but now that she wasn't there she wanted the sunny weather back. The phrase the grass is always greener on the other side came to mind, so did the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain but she figured that recalling that was just her being silly and whimsical.

Lost in thoughts about just why Spanish rain falls mostly on the plains she didn't even notice they had stopped until Langly had poked her several times.

"Earth to Rebecca," he said, having resorted to shaking her violently.

"Langly," she muttered. "Stop that,"

"You're the one who was spacing out." he protested, grabbing his luggage. "What were you doing anyway?"

"Daydreaming," she replied, getting up and exiting the bus right behind Langly.

"What about?" he asked, watching the bus pull away and leave them in a small town with a ten minute hike to their motel ahead of them.

"Spain," Rebecca stated, noticing that the others had already started to head toward the motel and began to follow them.

"Wha?" Langly said, very confused as he jogged to catch up with her "Spain?"

"Yes Spain," she turned around to face him so she was walking backwards. "What's wrong with Spain?"

"Nothing," he caught up with her easily since she had to walk slower since she was facing the opposite way that she was watching. "Are we there yet?" he asked a couple of minutes later in a whiny voice.

"No, Langly if we were there yet you would see the motel," Rebecca said, annoyed with him. "And unless it's invisible I don't see it, therefore we are not there yet. And if you ask one more time I'll shove a sock down your throat,"

"Someone had a little too much coffee," he muttered, struggling to carry his heavy bag full of hacking gear.

"I heard that," she yelled back to him, since he was falling behind the others. "And I'm not the one who is whining worse than a three year old,"

"I am not acting like a three year old," Langly protested, breathing heavily.

"Yes you are, and you must be really out of shape if you're breathing hard already," she replied as she stopped for him to catch up.

"I'm not out of shape, I just didn't have loads of caffeine this morning like you," to demonstrate his point he broke out into a sprint and dashed past her, while she just watched amused. However, he was only able to keep this up for a short distance before he stopped to catch his breath, panting. "See,"

"Of course, and if the six yard sprint ever makes it to the Olympics you'll be it's champion," she proclaimed, walking until she had caught up to him. "We'd better hurry up, the other guys are pretty far ahead of us,"

"I'm coming,"

* * *

They were all settled into their motel rooms, the four Gunmen in one and Rebecca getting her own. Langly and Frohike had gone down to the police station to see if they could find any additional information on the disappearances, while Rebecca, Jimmy, and Byers were staying back at the motel since they only had one rental car. They hadn't actually paid for the car, Langly had hacked into the rental car company's database and put them on the reservation list for a pre-paid one week rental.

It was still early in the morning, about eight o' clock or so, and there was nothing really good on TV, there were only about ten channels on the sometimes-color TV in her room. So Rebecca decided to take advantage of the nice weather to go outside and take a walk. Their motel was situated along a shoddily paved road and right next to a swamp, she usually thought of swamps as being more to the south but she figured they could be this far north and that it wasn't that strange. She avoided it due to the fact that she would like to avoid alligators, or were there crocodiles in Florida? She really didn't know but she decided that both of them were bad so she went in the opposite direction of the swamp into a meadow.

As was usual, her mind began to wander. And at this point in time her mind wandered over to what had been the topic of most of her wanderings of the mind as of late: Langly. She had to admit that she was quite attracted to him, she had always liked the geeky guys. Still, she was afraid to get involved with him and she knew why: because he would but his job before her and after going through that with her last boyfriend she wouldn't tolerate it again. Although, she could argue that it wouldn't be a problem with Langly since they both had the same job. She was getting quite tired of arguing with herself and decided to wander her mind to something less controversial in her own head, so she found a nice spot and lay down on her back.

She looked up into the blue sky dotted with white puffy clouds and began to form pictures from them, like psychiatrists make you do with inkblots only clouds are fuzzier than inkblots. A particularly large one near the horizon looked very much, to her anyway, like a dragon and another one just above that one looked like a dog. She also saw: a hand, a tree, a UFO-a cloud shaped like one not the actual thing, and an ice cream cone.

It wasn't long before she decided to close her eyes and rest them for a moment, after looking almost directly at the sun for a while. Even though she had slept pretty well on the plane, she hadn't been getting enough sleep lately so without making a conscious effort to she drifted off into sleep.

"Hey, is it dead?" a voice said from above her, young probably a boy. This woke Rebecca up, but she feigned sleep for the moment, curious to see what actions they would take next.

"I dunno, poke it," another voice said, once again probably belonging to a boy of about the same age. Then she felt a stick being pressed into her side.

"It's not moving," the first voice declared, poking her once more harder this time.

"I can see that you moron," the second one replied, kicking her side very hard. Rebecca jolted up, shocking both boys.

"You little brats better get out of here soon before I lose my temper," she got to her feet, brushing pieces of grass off of her jeans.

"Oh, yeah and what happens if you lose your temper?" the one who had kicked her asked, puffing out his chest in an attempt to look menacing.

"This," she shoved the kid out of her way and started to walk back to the motel.

"That's nothin'," the other one proclaimed, running up behind her and kicking the back of her leg.

"You little monster," she stated, grabbing him by the back of his shirt and making him fall to the ground, once more starting to head back to the motel.

"You'll pay for that you bitch," he grabbed the stick and smacked it on her upper back.

"Yeah, like that really hurt," she put her key in the lock and went back into her hotel room. "Better luck next time," she shouted as the door closed in the faces of the two boys.

She could hear their pounding on the door for about another fifteen minutes before they finally gave up and went away. Now with a pounding headache, she Rebecca reached into her carry-on bag and pulled out a bottle of Tylenol. Getting a water bottle, she popped a pill and waited for her the hammer hitting her brain to go away.

"Beck," she heard Langly call from the other side of the door, as he pounded on it. "Beck, open up,"

"I'll be right there Langly," she shouted, putting away her water bottle and Tylenol.

"Hurry up," he shouted back. "We're heading to the nursing home now," he banged on the door some more.

"What do you hope to accomplish by that?" she walked over so she was close to the door. "Other than annoying the hell out of me,"

"To get you to hurry up," he explained, continuing his banging.

"Really? Because all it's making me want to do is stay in my room just to annoy you," she said in a sickly sweet voice.

"Come on, just hurry up," he shouted louder. "Please," he added, stopping his abuse of the helpless door.

"Okay, but only because you said 'please'," she unlocked the door and stepped outside to where Langly was waiting.

"We really need to hurry now," Langly grabbed her wrist, pulling her towards their rental car.

"Are all five of us really going to fit into that thing?" Rebecca asked, eyeing the rather small car with disdain.

"It was the only one left on the lot," he explained, practically shoving her into it.

"You're such the gentleman," she said, her voice laden with sarcasm.

"Thank you," he replied, every bit as sarcastically as she had made her previous comment.

"You guys bicker like a married couple," Jimmy noted, and then Langly's tennis shoe came flying through the air at him.

"Don't make me pull over," Byers warned, this, of course, caused waves of laughter to erupt through the entire car. Although Langly and Frohike snickered a little bit and Rebecca giggled, Jimmy was the one who laughed the hardest.

"Byers, you sound like my mother,"

* * *

They reached Meadow Arms in little under an hour. Following Byers's orders; Langly, Jimmy, and Rebecca kept quiet for the rest of the trip. Although Langly and Rebecca did pretend not to notice how their knees were touching the entire trip due to the confined space of the car, they did manage to make it to their destination without bickering. Once the car pulled to a complete stop, Langly practically sprinted out of the car and into the large parking lot.

Rebecca exited the car at a more leisurely pace as did the rest of the Gunmen. She saw Langly enter the building, and then turned her attention away from it and onto the other three Gunmen.

"So where do we start?" she asked.

"I think we should interview some residents, see if they saw anything," Byers suggested. "I have a hunch that it's one of the workers here. Since all of the disappearances have been visitors to here,"

"Did Langly and Frohike figure that out at the police station?" Rebecca picked up some police reports from the front seat and held them up.

"They stole it," he explained, apologetically.

"Sounds just like them," she tucked the police reports under her arm and headed towards the front doors of the home.

"I'm standing right here," Frohike reminded them. "I didn't go running off like some people," he mumbled under his breath.

* * *

Langly dashed into the nursing home, nearly knocking over an old lady carrying a plate of cookies. She was rather short and wearing a heavy sweatshirt and long ugly polka dotted skirt. She didn't seem angry with him for nearly knocking him over, she held out her cookies.

"Would you like one?" she asked, in a feeble voice that fitted in with her little old lady image.

"Sure," he replied, taking a few off of the plate. "Thanks," he took a bite of one, thoroughly chewing and swallowing it before speaking again. "I'm from a newspaper, we're investigating some disappearances that have occurred around here," he took another bite. "Have you noticed anything strange?" he asked, devouring a whole cookie.

"I can not say that I have," she said, smiling. "Do you like the cookies?"

"They're del-" and Langly collapsed onto the floor, out cold.

"I thought so," she was still smiling. "Bernard, Joseph. I have the next one," she yelled to two old elderly men that were sitting at a table playing chess.

"You sure he's a virgin?" Bernard asked, leaning over the unconscious man.

"I'm positive," the old lady insisted. "I know these things,"

"Alright, if you say so Bernice," Bernard grabbed onto Langly's arms and motioned for Joseph to grab his legs.

"He's going to be very tasty," Bernice smiled at Joseph's comment and commended herself for always making the best selections, when it was her turn to pick them they were the best.

"Thank you Joseph. Now we should get him out of the hall so that no one will find him before nightfall so that we perform the ceremony,"

"You're the best," Joseph complemented her.

"I know,"

* * *

Rebecca and the Gunmen entered the front lobby of Meadow Arms, it was strangely empty. One would expect that there would at least be some sort of receptionist or something to greet visitors. There weren't even any old people. Rebecca thought that the lobby was without a doubt the ugliest thing that she had ever seen. The walls were a salmon pink with a turquoise railing running across all of the walls, and the floor was covered in a navy blue carpet. She wasn't an interior designer by any means, her own apartment was a disaster, but she knew that this was just awful. The wicker chairs didn't help much at all.

"Man this place is ugly," Jimmy practically shouted out.

"I wholeheartedly agree," she went behind the desk where a receptionist should have been and pulled out the police reports.

"What are you doing?" Frohike asked, leaning over the desk to try to see what she was doing on the computer.

"Seeing who the victims were seeing," she explained. "Maybe if we can find a common link we'll be one step closer to the kidnapper. And where is Langly?"

"I don't know," Byers said. "I'll go look for him," he walked down one of the three hallways leading off into the recesses of the home.

"I'm going too," Jimmy yelled as he ran after Byers.

"I'd better stay here," Frohike suggested. "In case you need help with the computer,"

"There are no passwords," Rebecca stated. "And no security to speak of,"

"That's odd," he said, walking over so that he too was behind the desk. "Very odd,"

The next four hours were spent looking up each victim in the visitors log, which turned out to be a dead end since none of them visited the same person, and with Byers and Jimmy looking for Langly. They never found him, and they were starting to get worried since it wasn't an incredibly large nursing home and there weren't any places that he could be that they hadn't already checked.

At six, when it was getting dark, Byers and Jimmy went back to the lobby to report that they hadn't found much of anyone, and that Langly was still gone.

"Do you think that he's okay?" Rebecca wondered out loud, hoping for a reassuring answer.

"We don't have any indication that he is or isn't," Byers's answer wasn't exactly the type of one that she had been wishing for. She raised her hand to her mouth and began to chew on her, already ratty, fingernails as she always did when she was nervous. It was at this time that all of the lights went out, plunging the entire home into near darkness.

"I don't think that is a good thing," she stated, getting up from the swivel chair she had been sitting in. "Do you think it has anything to do with Langly?"

"Maybe," Byers offered. Then they heard chanting coming from somewhere in the home. "We should split up, try to see where it's coming from,"

"You're thinking that wherever it's coming from that's where Langly is?" Frohike asked, following Byers's train of thought. He heard footsteps, running from the lobby and off down one of the hallways.

"I think Rebecca is a bit ahead of you guys on the plan," Jimmy noted her footsteps becoming softer as she got further and further away from them.

"Yeah,"

* * *

The chanting was getting louder as Rebecca ran through the hallways, stopping only when she reached an intersection. Here she would listen for the direction the chanting was coming from and go that way. Soon she reached a room that she was sure the chanting was coming from, it was really loud chanting too, loud enough to be heard throughout the whole nursing home. She highly doubted that old people could make that loud of a noise, and it would explain why they hadn't seen many staff members.

"We feast on the flesh of the virgin to guarantee our immortality," the chanting had stopped and only one person was speaking now. Langly was missing, and the voice did say virgin so that means-. Langly was a virgin? Rebecca nearly snickered at the thought, but she was more worried about Langly. Mainly the fact that he was about to become their next meal, which didn't bode well for the geek. "With this last victim our pact with Markis is complete and our immortality granted," the person continued speaking.

She tested the door handle and found it to be, luckily, unlocked. Slowly and carefully she stepped inside the apartment, she could see a group of elderly people standing outside on the large patio that all of the inner apartments shared. The home was shaped like a square, with a hole in the center. All of the apartments that had doors opening to the hole shared a massive patio. Cautiously, Mission Impossible style, she proceeded, hiding behind corners to ensure her invisibility. It was a small apartment so she could reach the sliding glass door easily, it was open and that was why it seemed that the chanting was coming from inside this apartment.

Since it was already open, Rebecca could easily slip through undetected. The scene outside was horrendous. Langly was unconscious with his hands and feet bound, he was lying on a table right next to a giant pot of boiling water and surrounded by elderly people cheering as one very old lady was selecting a knife. She could only guess what it was for, cutting Langly's throat. There were so many old people that it made her wonder how she was going to get Langly out of this mess. The whole scene looked like something out of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, only with elderly people who didn't cut out their victim's hearts but ate them instead and, of course, there was no Harrison Ford.

She figured that a distraction would work, so she pulled out her lighter that she always carried around even though she didn't smoke, flicked it on, and threw it onto a patch of particularly dry and brown grass. She started carrying around a lighter ever since reading a book where one of the main characters, Sally Wilcox, carried around a lighter and it always helped her out so she figured she'd better do the same. This was the first real opportunity she'd had to use it, and was now glad that she had decided to keep it in her pocket all the time.

The patch of grass burst into flame, just like she had hoped. Since all of their attention would be diverted to the flaming grass, she hoped that they wouldn't notice her as she dashed over to rescue the unconscious Langly. And sure enough all of their attention was on the small fire and they ran over to try to put it out, even the one who was about to slit Langly's throat, dropping her knife as she ran.

This was her chance, and Rebecca took it. She ran over to the table that Langly was lying on and quickly cut through the twine that were serving as bonds, they had obviously counted on him not waking up before being murdered, which he wouldn't have. By putting one of his arms around her shoulders and using one of hers to support him, she was able to drag him quicker than just pulling on his arms. Unfortunately, Murphy's Law seemed to be with Rebecca and one of the elderly people saw them trying to escape.

"She's taking the sacrifice," he shouted, and the horde of old folks charged towards her, the fire forgotten.

She knew that they wouldn't make it to the door she had entered through in time, so she just tried to make it through the closest sliding door. Fortunately it was unlocked and she locked it behind her, leaving some of the elderly people to try to pound on the door, like zombies in one of the Dawn of the Dead movies. Others however, were smarter and went through the adjacent apartment doors to try and intercept her in the hallways.

Luckily she was faster than they were and could make it into the hallway before them, and made a mad dash for the lobby. How Jimmy, Byers, and Frohike had failed to hear all of the commotion and come running to her aid was a mystery to her, she just assumed they were too far away or had really bad hearing. Rebecca was able to make it outside before the horde even reached the lobby, and pulled several large potted plants in front of the front doors, locking them as well, to ensure that they wouldn't be getting out anytime soon. Still, that left Byers, Frohike, and Jimmy in danger, but only if they were virgins. She figured that they were safe.

Going over to the car, just to be safe, she sat down next to it with her back resting against the passenger side door. Langly was still unconscious, but definitely very much alive. His head was resting on her shoulder, like she had done to him on the plane ride here.

"You're lucky you know," she said, running her fingers through his long hair. "I wonder how they caught you. They're a bunch of little old ladies. I don't think they used force," she sighed. "I bet you'll tell us everything when you wake up. You're adorable, you know that? I really am attracted to you. But it would never work out, you're too dedicated to you work. And I don't think I could stand to come second, I guess I'm just selfish like that," she muttered to her self, sadly and kissed him on the forehead. "Sweet dreams, cutie,"

* * *

It had been a week since the incident at the nursing home, it had turned out that the elderly people had thought that by eating Langly they would all become young and live forever, so they had knocked out and locked all of the workers in a closet figuring that they wouldn't need them. They all were arrested for murder, kidnapping and a number of other charges and were awaiting sentencing, since none of them pleaded not guilty. After Rebecca had taken Langly outside, the others had found them less than a half of an hour later, having escaped through a window.

And now Rebecca was sitting back in her own apartment, wrapped up in a blanket and watching A Christmas Carol on tv, in preparation for Christmas which was still a good three weeks away. She cursed her building's heating problems as she went into her bedroom to get yet another blanket to put on her couch. Right now it resembled an igloo with all of the blanket's piled on top of it in a dome shape.

Just as she was settling in to resume her watching of the old movie, a loud knock came at the door accompanied by someone ringing the door bell. Rebecca groaned, noting the fact that she was wearing her ratty old flannel pajamas and not exactly wanting anyone so see her like that. So she just figured she'd hide under the many blankets and ignore it. Unfortunately, the person wanting to see her was persistent and kept banging on the door and ringing the doorbell until it threatened to give her a headache. Not wanting that to happen she reluctantly went over to the door and opened it, surprised to note that it was Langly who was standing there.

"Can I come in?" he asked shyly.

"Sure," she replied, opening the door wider to let her in, extremely self conscious about her own tattered appearance, and knowing that hiding under her many blankets had given her severe bed head.

"You remember last week when I nearly got eaten by old people?" he asked, sounding like he had practiced this. It made Rebecca slightly worried.

"Of course I do," she stated, afraid of what he was going to say next.

"You rescued me," he added, as if she hadn't known. "Yeah, well I was awake the whole time. Just paralyzed,"

"Oh," she said meekly, stunned by this news and not too happy about it either.

"I think you're wrong," now he really sounded like he had practiced this. "I'm not the only one working at the Lone Gunman, there's always Byers, Frohike, and even Jimmy. It's not like I can get transferred or anything. I have time for a life,"

"Langly, I really like you," she explained, turning away from him. "But I just can't,"

"Rebecca," he sounded like a kicked puppy dog. "Just give it a chance,"

"I can't," she took a few steps further away from him. "I'm sorry but I can't"

"I understand," he said, sounding hurt. His tone of voice killed Rebecca, because she wanted to make him happy but was too afraid to do anything. And he walked past her, exiting the apartment. As soon as he closed the door behind him, Rebecca felt a feeling of dread. She knew that she had made a huge mistake and dashed out into the hallway to see if she could fix it. Luckily Langly was still in the hall, walking towords the stairs.

"Langly, stop," she shouted, making him turn around hopefully. He seemed so be expecting her to say something but she didn't know what to say, so she just walked up to him and grabbed his hand that was dangling at his side. Holding onto his hand, she leaned in and kissed him softly on the lips. Langly wrapped his free hand around her waist to pull her closer to him, but instead of kissing her again he bent over and whispered in her ear.

"I'm glad you changed your mind,"

THE END

A/N: The book mentioned about one of the characters always having a lighter is actually a children's book series called Spooksville by Christopher Pike. Rebecca is most likely too old to have read them as a child, but she still could have read them as an adult and I just love Spooksville, it's my favorite book series of all time, definitely better than Goosebumps. Just in case anyone got the wrong idea, this is not the end of the Objects out of Place series...it will continue...


End file.
